1-29-11 Hodegpodge

In and Out

Due to travel, I may or may not be punctual about comments or email until Monday evening. In addition, I may not post on Monday.

Two Cartoons

Via Objectivism Online, I learned of two panel cartoons, "The 24 Types of Libertarian" and "The 24 Types of Authoritarian." I would find the first much more entertaining were it not for the fact that many people confuse libertarianism with actual advocacy of capitalism. (That, and the plausibility some of its straw men will have for many people.) The second cartoon, which was written in reaction to the first, is an almost unqualified success.

Both panels miss a twenty-fifth type: The Authoritarian Libertarian. I have personally become acquainted with a handful of these over the years. One such specimen was a member of the Libertarian Party and actually forced his daughter, while she was sick with the flu, to read Atlas Shrugged, demonstrating his own poor grasp of its meaning in the process.

Our occupation of Iraq -- without even the insistence of separation of religion and state we made with Japan after World War II -- might also qualify as "authoritarian libertarianism." You can't point guns at a people and expect them to become Jeffersonian democrats. You can afford them the opportunity to change their minds, and perhaps offer some guidance, but unless they change their minds about Islam as the source of all law, they'll end up with a theocracy.

Weekend Reading

"[T]here are, indeed, certain occasions when the truth doesn't matter as much as your physical safety or personal privacy." -- Michael Hurd in "When Is a Lie Better than the Truth?" at DrHurd.com

"[W]hether it's Facebook, classic cars, a hedge fund or plain vanilla index fund, all investors -- regardless of their wealth -- ... have the same right to make up their own minds about where to allocate their money." -- Jonathan Hoenig in "Why Do Regulators Hate the Markets?" at SmartMoney

More Beautiful Music

Commenting on yesterday's post (You may need to scroll up.), Snedcat linked to the above example of Franco-Flemish polyphany. See his comments to learn about it.

Nice Joke, Mom!

Our flight is early Saturday morning, so I'm composing this Friday night. I talked to my Mom on the phone about an hour ago, and she told me about a new procrastination joke: "I have not yet begun to procrastinate!"

"That would be great material for my blog," I tell her.

"I'll email you a picture," she replied. "Sucker!" she thought.

There was no email. The image at right comes from the Better than Pants site, which sells the shirt.

-- CAV

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Two Ends of the Dial

It's a drag when one's bursting at the seams to write on a topic, but the time and place are completely wrong. Multiply that by at least five and you may understand where I'm sitting. I'm nearing crucial stages on three major projects, and I've gotten a mixture of very good and potentially very bad news -- which will affect how I proceed with the projects. I may or may not write any more about any of this here, but these things are tugging at my mind enough that today's writing goal has become very simple: Throw up a quick post on something I like and get down to some crucial thinking about these other matters!

So, here we go, with a blues song that makes me laugh every time I hear it, "I Ain't Drunk," by Albert Collins.

And, just for a change of pace, I occasionally enjoy listening to Gregorian chant, although I am an atheist.

My first CD of Gregorian chant came to be somewhat by chance. I received it due to a Yankee swap at a Christmas party of an Objectivist Club years ago. I was inclined to trade at first, but someone talked me into at least giving the music a ... chance (sorry!). I found it enjoyable and relaxing, and the music ended up on my iPod, where I rediscovered it this week.

-- CAV

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A Green-undation?

An Australian news outlet discusses (HT: HBL) the role of the environmentalist movement -- drunk with illegitimate power over the economy -- in causing the recent disastrous flooding in the Australian state of Queensland.

Eco-catastrophists always cite the precautionary principle: if they are right and we don't reduce CO2 emissions, we face Armageddon. If they are wrong, all it costs is dollars.

But when money is allocated and attention prioritised to making contingency plans for vague hypothetical scenarios in the distant future, real priorities are neglected and real risks overlooked.

When leaders proclaim climate change as the greatest moral challenge, the entire machinery of government becomes preoccupied with the busy work of solving an imaginary problem. It is then easily blindsided by a real emergency. [hyperlink and emphasis added]

Miranda Devine's heart is in the right place, but the real problem isn't (assuming she is correct) that global warming is an "imaginary problem." The real problem is that the government is in the business of deciding whether dams get built in the first place and, once built, whether their operators can make room for floodwaters in their reservoirs. This is ultimately what allows the Greens power "well beyond their pay grade," as Devine puts it. Take government out of the real estate business and government approval out of the use-of-private-property loop (so long as that use doesn't infringe on the rights of others) and neither the foolishness of the Greens nor of anyone else will be able to cause such big, avoidable disasters again.

I don't know the entire background of this disaster, but many (if not most) dams throughout the world were originally built at the behest of the governments for such purposes as large-scale irrigation, power generation, and flood control. Government involvement, beyond such matters as ensuring protection of property rights for all affected by such projects or enforcing relevant legal agreements, is not only unnecessary, but, as this piece shows, undesirable. (Had the Wivenhoe dam been owned and operated by, say, a water supply corporation, a power company, or an insurance concern, I doubt the need to release water before the lake behind it was at 190% capacity would have gone unmet as it did here.)

It is interesting to consider how much money and property have been taken from private citizens for such purposes, and how many dams have been built that the economics of supply and demand would have prohibited in the first place. (The Three Gorges Dam in China, which required the relocation of over a million people, and has been built on a seismic fault, is one particularly thought-provoking example.)

Environmentalism is hardly the only reason massive public works projects created and operated by the government end up harming individual citizens long after their pockets have been picked to finance them, and global warming hysteria is not the first and will not be the last rationalization for mis-use of such facilities and mis-allocation of funds and effort.

Global warming hysteria is just one small part of the cause of this disaster. The larger problem is government control of the economy through government "oversight" of the infrastructure.

-- CAV

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Another Day, ...

... Another Nor'easter

I'm not catching any breaks from the snow this season. Roads the other day were, before the snow crews could catch up, the worst I'd ever driven, and they might be comparably bad this afternoon and evening. So I'm helping with the commute again. Have to be out the door momentarily.

***

In the meantime, here's an incredible video (via Objectivism Online) about a city ordinance in Houston that is preventing a couple from voluntarily feeding the homeless.

Not that feeding the hungry and setting food preparation standards are a proper functions of the government, but this video shows it at cross-purposes with itself, and demonstrably making the lives of poor citizens even worse than they already are in the process.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Edited last paragraph.

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The New Racism?

Writing for Slate, Shankar Vedantam compares partisanship to racism and sees the two as essentially the same. In some respects, I think he is onto something, but in others, he is way off the mark.

In so far as most people uncritically adopt the philosophical views of those around them, Vedantam is right: Racism and party affiliation are crude stands on philosophical issues pertinent to ethics and politics. Given that racism is always wrong and that no American political party is pro-individual rights, it is even more common than Vedantam observes for people to adopt views that undermine their own self-interest. He is also correct that people can and often do pre-judge others based on party affiliation.

It is at this last point that I start having problems with Vedantam's argument, or at least what I see as the kinds of implications it has. One has exactly zero control over the race(s) to which one's ancestors belong, and (potentially) full control over one's political philosophy. That is, one's racial makeup is irrelevant to anyone who has to gauge one's moral stature or the quality of one's judgment. One's party affiliation (if any) -- or, more correctly, one's political philosophy -- quite likely does, at least to some first approximation, reflect on those very qualities. Some political views (e.g., advocacy of totalitarianism), in fact, reflect so negatively on the person holding them that the best they can possibly imply about a person is an almost incredible degree of confusion or naiveté. It can be -- but isn't necessarily -- true that taking someone's political views into account when forming a judgment about them is done in the same unthinking manner as someone giving a member of another race short shrift.

Before I go further, let me state that I haven't looked into the research Vedantam cites. It may well be that there was some attempt to account for some of the issues I bring up below. But the example reminds me of a type of presumptuousness I have observed many times:

In a recent experiment, researchers assigned Democrats and Republicans to play the role of a college admissions director and asked them to evaluate the applications of two students based on their SAT scores, GPA scores, and recommendation letters. Some applicants were described as enthusiastic members of the Young Democrats or Young Republicans and were said to have been campaign volunteers for Democratic or Republican presidential candidates.

When evaluators were not told about the applicants' partisan affiliations, 79 percent selected the candidate with the strongest scores. When the evaluators were told about the applicants' partisan affiliations -- and the partisan affiliation of the candidate with the strongest score conflicted with the partisan loyalty of the evaluator -- only 44 percent of evaluators chose the candidate with the strongest score.

The bias was evident among both Democratic and Republican evaluators. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology and authored by Geoffrey D. Munro, Terell P. Lasane, and Scott P. Leary.

Partisanship is also like racism in a third way: Studies have shown that racism is so socially proscribed that people exhibit it nowadays only when they can plausibly deny -- to themselves and to others -- that they are biased. One meta-analysis of studies, for example, found that "discrimination against blacks was more likely to occur when potential helpers had more opportunities to rationalize decisions not to help" by invoking "justifiable explanations having nothing to do with race." [link dropped]

Let's set aside the many difficulties inherent in trying to measure a bigoted, knee-jerk reaction vs. an honest attempt to judge someone based on very limited information (e.g., that individual members of political parties can hold views on certain issues that differ markedly from their party's platform, or that a personal interview might have made a difference in the answers reached). I still see pitfalls here.

If someone strongly believes his political views are right to the point that he questions the judgment of someone who belongs to the opposite party, why shouldn't that factor in to his judgment of the candidate? (This isn't to say that such a person doesn't need to reexamine his political beliefs.) And, given that many blacks in America are affected by a pathological culture, how can we expect knowledge of this fact not to affect such a judgment similarly? (This isn't to say that someone shouldn't check this premise, or at least how he applies it.) Again, these are judgments being made on limited information and in a vacuum. If I had such concerns, I might pick up a phone and call the candidate (or one of his references) or otherwise get more information. I have a funny feeling that many others would also act accordingly in a non-controlled setting.

"Is this candidate acceptable or not?" is a yes-or-no question. It does not follow from the fact that someone answers one way or the other -- and this is the same yes-or-no answer that some kind of bigot would give -- that, therefore, bigotry was involved. I don't think Vedantam is guilty of making this kind of fallacious argument, but I've seen a sort of, "You did X because you're bigoted whether you know it or not," enough times that it bears mention. Purveyors of such nonsense, from petty bullies to advocates of government-mandated racial discrimination (e.g., hiring quotas) use this fallacy all the time, and will latch on to such studies as scientific "proof" that they are right.

-- CAV

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Stagnant by Design

Edward Glaeser, an economist writing for the Boston Globe, considers the slow rate of population growth in Massachusetts vis-a-vis its strong economy and good quality of life, and comes to the following conclusion:

The issue isn't lack of demand for new housing, but the vast number of local regulations that deter it. More than half the land in Greater Boston has a minimum lot size of greater than an acre. For years, communities have added more anti-growth rules, such as bans on large developments. In 2005 alone, three states each permitted more housing than Massachusetts did over the entire decade.

... [D]on't blame the weather. That explanation lets us off the hook too easily. Instead, think about how difficult it would be to add a couple hundred homes in your town and recognize that the Bay State stagnates by design.

The piece is mis-titled, though. Rather than, "If We Build It, They Will Come," the Globe should have gone for something less cute and more to the point, like, "If We Get out of Their Way, They Will Come."

It is interesting to note further that scarcity of affordable housing, a high cost of living, and un-realized growth would all fall into the categories of "the additional costs of state and local regulations, as well as snowballing effects, such as lost opportunities," that a recent report on the cost of federal regulations did not account for in its trillions-of-dollars annual price tag for government regulation of the economy.

-- CAV

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1-22-11 Hodgepodge

The Decline Effect

Some time ago, I blogged on the work of John Ioannidis, who famously claims to have proven that "most published research findings are false." In a similar vein, John Cook quotes the following from a New Yorker article I intend to read soon:

"... when I submitted these null results I had difficulty getting them published. The journals only wanted confirming data. It was too exciting an idea to disprove, at least back then." ... After a new paradigm is proposed, the peer-review process is tilted toward positive results. But then, after a few years, the academic incentives shift -- the paradigm has become entrenched -- so that the most notable results are now those that disprove the theory.

This also reminds me of some interesting new uses of placebos in research I heard about some time back. Newer studies of pharmaceuticals were showing their effects becoming less distinguishable from placebos than in prior studies.

Weekend Reading

"The absence of entitlement programs is not a violation of anybody's rights, and, contrary to the view of some pundits, abjuring from robbing others in such a manner is not a 'sacrifice.' It is justice. " -- Wendy Milling in "The Immorality Of Public Safety Nets" at Forbes

"Immediately remove the nude scanners and abolish the enhanced pat-downs, and let those who insist on irrational measures for their 'security' stay home if they do not like it." -- Wendy Milling in "Nude Scanners Vs. The Foundations Of Capitalism" at Forbes

"Blaming others for 'making' you feel one way or another is the same as handing over your intellectual and psychological destiny to other people." -- Michael Hurd in "Is It Fact or Fiction?" at DrHurd.com

"[W]hile I don't buy weakness as a matter of philosophy, if you trust the market sages to buy when there's 'blood in the streets' -- now might be your chance." -- Jonathan Hoenig in "Buy When There's Blood in the Streets?" at SmartMoney

"[I]f we're talking about the creation of wealth in a division of labor economy, the most productive Americans don't benefit the most: They contribute the most." -- Yaron Brook and Don Watkins in "How About Tax Reparations For The Rich?" at Forbes

"[W]ith eyes wide open, I see a movement imperiled by the same entrenched thinking that has driven government's growth for more than a century." -- Tom Bowden in "The Tea Party Will Fail -- Unless It Fully Embraces Individualism as a Moral Ideal" at The Christian Science Monitor

From the Vault

X years ago today (plus or minus three days), I posted on:

1. My (temporary) relief at Scott Brown's election to the Senate.
   
2. An anti-evolution argument that actually supports the theory of evolution.
3. Whether, "Fight an election with the politicians you have," is actually good advice.
4. A town seeking to outlaw the same word that would be bowdlerized from an American classic a few years later.
5. A recommended article about the redistributionist GOP.

It is interesting to see how many political topics keep coming back unchanged in our current cultural stalemate.

Market Pressure

Southwest is my favorite airline by far.

This ad not only provides an example of why, but it might be good to remember the next time you hear someone assert that companies have a vested "interest" in nickel-and-diming their customers, and that we "need" government regulations to prevent such behavior.

Either its competitors will stop charging such fees, or they will continue to lose customers to Southwest until most of the people these fees annoy know about this difference.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: (1) Rewrote first section. (2) Provided working version of embedded video. (3) Made several minor edits.

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"None of Us Are Free"

I've been behind the wheel a lot lately, in part to test drive a recently-repaired car and in part because I'm a more experienced winter driver than my wife, believe it or not. My brother and I threw papers from a Volkswagen when we were in high school, and we'd sometimes have to contend with freezing rain. A winter I spent long ago in Connecticut, with a forty-five minute commute didn't hurt, either.

The car's fine and Mrs. Van Horn's got to learn how to drive in this stuff sooner or later, so I'll probably turn over the reins to her today -- if the snowstorm du jour isn't ridiculously heavy. Fortunately, departure time is mid-morning today.

I tend to listen to music as I drive, and yesterday, I particularly enjoyed the song in the above video. It's "None of Us Are Free" by Solomon Burke, and it's the finale in the American Blues compilation.

-- CAV

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You Get What You Inspect

It's been one of those weeks. Visiting with some of Mrs. Van Horn's relatives, I glanced down at my glass of tea at lunch and found a curious piece of "ice" on the rim. Yep. It was a piece of glass, so I sent back the tea. I called the waiter back as soon as I saw him again. "I'm going to have to be 'that guy' and ask for another one," I said as I pointed to the chipped rim of the glass he'd just brought by as a replacement. This chip was smaller, and easier to miss, but new.

I'm low on blogging time -- and time for everything else -- this week due to unexpected car and computer repairs. The wife is temporarily working north of town and her Dad has been kind enough to let us borrow one of his cars for the duration. As we came home from the aforementioned visit, I noticed a loss of power steering and high engine temperatures about a mile before our exit. The day before yesterday, after checking the new belts under the hood -- and the pulley that replaced the one that had seized and broken off -- I started the engine and noticed a light peeking out at me from behind the steering wheel. Good thing: I'd forgotten to check the coolant level. And yes: The people whose job it was to fix a car that had overheated had forgotten to check the coolant, replace what had been lost, and check for leaks.

Last week, the CPU fan on my desktop finally finished failing. I'd been running with an open side panel so I could easily check on an intermittent, but plainly abnormal noise I'd get sometimes out of the blue -- but which would mysteriously disappear whenever I'd take the tower to another room and run it, even for several hours in one case. The new heat sink/fan assembly arrived yesterday and, after following the base assembly instructions, I noticed that some protective tape was hard to remove and had ragged edges. Step One was to assemble the base around the heat transfer surface, according to processor socket type. Step Two was to remove the tape from the portion that was to form the heat transfer contact with the CPU. Upon taking the base apart, I found small pieces of leftover tape next to where my CPU would have been. (Either the instructions are bad or the manufacturer is using the wrong size tape.) I've heard the cooling job that CPU fans do compared to removing the amount of heat in an incandescent bulb from an area about the size of a fingernail. Good thing I don't have any tape down there!

All of these things remind me of a saying that my first direct boss on a submarine, the Engineer, used to say. "You get what you inspect." He said it all the time, even around the enlisted men. At the time, I thought he was rude for doing so. But now, I realize that he was just doing his job, which was to back up the enlisted men and his junior officers. Anyone can make mistakes, including people who have earned trust. No one's word for something, however trivial, can serve as a substitute for consulting the facts of reality and rooting out contradictions, which aren't always so obvious as the ones I discuss here. And sometimes, one person in a room full of people will be the one man between triumph and disaster.

I wish I were still in contact with the Eng. I'd like to thank him for demanding that I bring my full attention and critical faculties to bear back then: Him and that electrician's mate who, frustrated with a young JO's habit of asking nicely for people to do things, blurted out, "Give me an order!"

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected some typos and made other minor edits.

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Obama's "De-Regulation"

David Harsanyi of the Denver Post writes about Barack Obama's latest crusade, which the President outlined recently in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial. First, the President signed into law a massive (but unread) bill regulating medical care and medical insurance in the name of protecting our health from consensual trade between doctors and patients. Now, in the name of protecting the free market system, Barack Obama is going to "root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb."

On one level, Harsanyi makes his point beautifully:

Obama doesn't have to look far, if he's serious. Nor does he need an executive order [or the cost-benefit analysis it calls for]. Right now, the Environmental Protection Agency is drafting carbon rules to force on states, even though a similarly torturous 2,000 pages on a cap-and-trade scheme intending to make power more expensive was rejected. Maybe there's something in that pile of paper to mine.

But on another level, the piece falls flat: Harsanyi neither questions the propriety of government regulation of the economy nor mentions that controls breed controls. It is such hard questions, particularly the first (which is a moral question), that pundits must raise before the tide of popular opinion will really turn against such regulations.

Only then can we really root out this enormous, $1.75 trillion (and growing) annual burden on the economy.

-- CAV

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41=0?

I myself am confused over whether to pronounce that, "forty-one equals zero," or "forty-one equals oh."

Those who still recall the election campaign of Senator Scott Brown as the forty-first vote against ObamaCare may find themselves disappointed by the following recent comments:

"It takes a guy who drives a truck with 216,000 miles and is from Wrentham and has a barn jacket to tell everybody that 'Hey, we have to get together and say cut the crap with the lettering and the name calling and the twisting of words and the fact that we're not doing what we’re expected to do to move our state and our country forward,'" Brown said.

Brown -- who was elected to the late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's seat on Jan. 19 last year -- said his election as the 41st senator forced the two parties to have a conversation.

"What's happening in the House and in the Senate with people not talking, well I have to tell you that's changed since I got there. People are forced to talk. Some of my best friends are Democrats. We go out and try to work things through and try to move our country forward," Brown said. "I think Dr. King would appreciate the bipartisanship that I have shown that others have shown."

Wasn't Brown elected for a reason? If so, didn't it have something to do with the fact that he wasn't a "D?" And has he forgotten already the underhanded way the Democrats passed ObamaCare even after he took office? How could there even be grounds for a productive conversation with a party that showed so much contempt for both rational give-and-take and the will of the people?

There's no such thing as "forcing" someone to "talk," to suddenly become receptive to genuine debate. However, any bully will certainly pretend to be reasonable once someone stands up to him, so long as he feels he is being watched. This is the actual posture of the Democratic Party after the 2010 elections.

Color me outraged, but not so much surprised. In a way, Brown is right: There is really little substantive difference between the Party of Big Government Now and the Party of Big Government, But Not Just Yet. In one sense, the labels are silly.

But even many of the staunchest conservative partisans do, wrongly, "cut the crap" with labeling very time they unknowingly dismiss the American cause as non-ideological, commonsensical, or simply more "adult" than that of the left. I once saw the estimable Thomas Sowell make such an error.

His error is a common one, in which he treats an implicitly rational, reality-oriented philosophical outlook as a given, rather than as an implicit example of just another possible ideology. My last would doubtless strike many, probably including Sowell himself, as moral relativism at first blush, but it is not. For if the rational, "adult" ideology that Sowell implicitly favors can be judged as an ideology, so must all other ideologies be examined under the cold light of reason, and compared against the facts of reality, which include the requirements for man's survival.

To fail to identify what one stands for can have many causes, including cowardice or befuddlement. Does Scott, so far removed from the Revolution his ads invoked, really understand why he was elected? And, coming from a state whose people are anything but Jeffersonian Democrats, could such a confused man really be expected to stand for anything but the "wisdom" of the crowd, or to seek anything but the safety of numbers? Scott's dismissal of labels isn't because he sees neither party as respecting freedom, but because he doesn't really see such an issue.

Until the common man Scott evokes with his vehicle of choice and his manner of dress once again also possesses the same love for freedom he did a couple of centuries ago, it will be men like Scott, whose heart is in the right place, but who can't tell enemies from friends, whom they will choose as leaders.

-- CAV

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Ephemeralization

An idea I see pop up from time to time in science fiction as well as in discussions of technology is that sufficiently advanced technology will look more and more like magic, for lack of a better term.

Paul Graham comes up with a much better term as he attempts to conceptualize what smart phones and tablet computers really might be, and what is going on as they become ubiquitous.

After a few seconds it struck me that what we'll end up calling these things is tablets. The only reason we even consider calling them "mobile devices" is that the iPhone preceded the iPad. If the iPad had come first, we wouldn't think of the iPhone as a phone; we'd think of it as a tablet small enough to hold up to your ear.

The iPhone isn't so much a phone as a replacement for a phone. That's an important distinction, because it's an early instance of what will become a common pattern. Many if not most of the special-purpose objects around us are going to be replaced by [software] running on tablets.

Later, Graham turns from the type of object to the type of innovation involved in creating it:

The advantages of doing things in software on a single device are so great that everything that can get turned into software will. So for the next couple years, a good recipe for startups will be to look around you for things that people haven't realized yet can be made unnecessary by a tablet app.

In 1938 Buckminster Fuller coined the term ephemeralization to describe the increasing tendency of physical machinery to be replaced by what we would now call software. The reason tablets are going to take over the world is not (just) that Steve Jobs and Co are industrial design wizards, but because they have this force behind them. The iPhone and the iPad have effectively drilled a hole that will allow ephemeralization to flow into a lot of new areas...

Among the things Graham suggests could be done with a tablet and software rather than dedicated hardware is the venerable bathroom scale. Personally, I'd wash my hands right after finding such an app on a borrowed tablet, but you get the idea.

It can be an interesting exercise to consider what can be done in this way. For example, the car I was driving last night had engine trouble. Wouldn't a car diagnostic app on such a phone have been nice? Ah, but someone has thought of that already. That and web access would have been nice to have last night, as a backup to my own guess as to what the problem was, based on past experience and a look under the hood.

-- CAV

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1-15-11 Hodgepodge

A Look at Jim Crow

Brian Phillips dissects sharecropping, which is frequently (and wrongly) used by leftists to condemn capitalism for causing poverty among blacks in the south after the Civil War.

Combined, these laws essentially put black laborers back into slavery. The laborers could no longer negotiate on equal terms or act on their own judgment. The penalties for vagrancy greatly discouraged blacks from seeking better employment. The plantation cartel had the steady source of labor that it needed. In short, it was government coercion that protected racists and made the cartel possible.

Please note that I did not say "after slavery" above.

Weekend Reading

"Letting your winners run isn't a stock tip -- it's a time-tested technique." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Make More Money by Not Trading at All" at SmartMoney

"One of life's challenges is to take risks, no matter how small." -- Michael Hurd, in "Compelled to Control" at DrHurd

From the Vault

In light of the GOP selecting a new chairman the other day, it is an interesting coincidence that I complained about its out-going chairman, Michael Steele, about this time last year:

As I have noted in the past with other, similar, cries of "Hypocrisy!" from the right, it is fine to call someone a hypocrite, but not enough when that person's precepts are wrong to begin with and it would thus be immoral to actually follow them anyway.

I looked around a little bit the other day and came up empty when I tried to get some idea of what Priebus's political philosophy is like.

Did the Republicans act short-range, and choose a cypher so as to avoid the inevitable unpleasantness that comes with disagreement? If so, they will have buyer's remorse sooner or later, either due to his soon-to-become-apparent positions (because no one man can satisfy all factions, with their mutually contradictory goals), or because a jellyfish can't be a leader.

Who's an Expert?

Last week's encounter with a scam website caused memories of a classic essay I read years ago to bubble up into my mind: "False Authority Syndrome," by Rob Rosenberger. Here's an excerpt:

[Virus expert Wolfgang] Stiller sums up False Authority Syndrome among computer security experts: "Put me on a panel with a computer security person, and I won't claim to have his level of security expertise. But the computer security guy will invariably claim to have my level of virus expertise. How can you convince the audience in a diplomatic way that he doesn't?"

I'm not sure I care for the term "false authority syndrome," because it focuses too much on ultracrepidarianism, and too little on credulity. Also, the solution to the problem the essay explores isn't credentialism, either. I don't think Rosenberger makes this mistake, but I can see someone falling into it after reading his essay.

Time for Some Blues

Clifton Chenier sings, "I'm a Hog for You," live. I didn't watch the above video all the way through, but between the prominent food and the person twirling the ornate umbrella, I'd bet money it was filmed at a Jazz Fest.

-- CAV

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Snow Time

I'm not sure it was quite a blizzard we had this week, but Boston did get over a foot of snow Wednesday night and Thursday morning. If you can call occasionally tacking into strong headwinds while being pelted with tiny ice pellets a "stroll," then I took one in my neighborhood around lunch time yesterday. Since the most snow I'd ever seen before was about six inches, I brought my camera.

Captions follow each set of photos. Click photos to enlarge.

Upper Left: This is an alley near our place. See the third image here for what the planters at near ground level on the building to the right of the alley look like in warm weather. Upper Right: The figure in the distance is one of two people I saw who broke out their skis. The skier is in Southwest Corridor Park in front of a playground. See the previous link for what the park looks like in warm weather. Lower Left: This is a parking lot behind some brownstones. From what I understand -- and I could be wrong -- some tenants in brownstones have to help dig out of any snowfall. That possibility made our apartment complex sound much more attractive to me back when we were house-hunting. Lower Right: It's amazing how thick the snow got even on the vertical surfaces of things, like this mailbox. I was going to try to be cute and discover that the post-man hadn't checked this location yet, but a removal of six inches of snow from that part of the box revealed that he wasn't due until four.

Upper Left: Even more impressive to me than the snow itself was the blinding pace of the cleanup. A couple of guys in snow plows are having a skull session here. Upper Right: Here's a dump truck/plow loaded with gravel on Columbus Street. As I returned home on Boyleston, I saw a set of four huge snow plows speeding down the street in a staggered formation. I couldn't whip out the camera fast enough to get a decent shot of that, though. Lower Left: This is the northeastward view of Huntington Avenue from Massachusetts Avenue. The headlights in the distance are more snow removal vehicles. Lower Right: This lunatic-left bookstore is just a reminder that we're in Massachusetts. Lucy Parsons, once described as "more dangerous than a thousand rioters," was a civil rights activist who, unfortunately, was also an anarchist and communist.

Left: Here's a closeup of a poster on the window of the store. I can't remember how many times I've wished I had a camera as I walked by this place. It was, unfortunately, closed, so I have no images of loitering Marxists to post today. Right: Moving on, since this blog is a happy place on Friday, we see some birds. Yes. Birds. The sound-dampening that comes with heavy snow cover caused me to be unaware of their chirping until I was basically right on top of them. Other than sea gulls, I haven't seen birds up here in weeks: I must say, with that reminder, that I do miss them.

-- CAV

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Wrong Lesson

Writing for the Weekly Standard, Jay Cost analyzes decades-long political trends and ends up offering the following advice to the Republican Party:

What the Republican party​ -- ​supported as it is today by so many former Democrats​ -- ​must do is what the Democrats used to claim to be able to do. The Republicans must find a way to sustain the entitlements that Americans have come to depend on​ -- ​most notably Social Security and Medicare​ -- without crippling the economy with increased levels of taxation. Liberal Democrats who demagogue about secret Republican schemes to destroy Social Security and Medicare have it exactly backwards. In truth, the Republican party​ -- ​and only the Republican party​ -- ​can save these entitlements without destroying the prospects for economic growth. The Democratic party can no longer be counted on to do this, which is why the GOP consists of so many old Democratic constituencies. This is the great mandate of the GOP: not to destroy the New Deal and Great Society, but to save their best elements from the ruinous ambitions of today’s liberal Democrats.

To the degree that many Americans don't fully grasp that the aforementioned entitlements can't be saved, or why any attempt to do so will ruin the economy, Cost is correct. It would be political suicide in the short term to start phasing these out carelessly or without making it clear why such changes are necessary. In fact, it is likely that all the American voter is ready for at this point is to stop digging our fiscal hole, but not to start filling it back up.

Fortunately, as history shows with slavery going from being the political "third rail" of its day to being abolished after a few decades of cultural activism, public opinion can overcome the inertia Costs's analysis relies on to change radically. In the end, Cost's piece illustrates the limits of mere political analysis. Elections are not educational campaigns, but snapshots of what the public is willing to support at a given moment.

Politics is limited by the facts of economic reality and by culture -- by the metaphysical (the things we can't change) and the man-made (the things we can change). One of these will cause our country to cease living beyond its means, one way or the other. Cost's advice may win a few elections for a GOP that imagines the only flaw in the Democratic Party to be incompetence or corruption, but there is no way to defy economic reality "competently."

The real hope for our country lies in overcoming inertia, not pandering to it.

-- CAV

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A Disturbing Motif

The headline of an NPR piece reads, "A Disturbing Motif: Online Manifesto, Mass Shooting," and author Linton Weeks at one point asks the following question:

Seeing that there is often a pattern of behavior in which an angry, demented or ultraviolent person goes visibly crazy on the Internet before committing atrocities in real life does raise the question: Is there a way to reverse the chain of events? Could an online community or any close observer of the Internet prevent another Tucson-style tragedy?

It's a fair question, but not a good one, as it leaves most of the relevant parameter space unexplored, focusing as it does on just Internet ramblings. While particularly bizarre rants might well serve as a red flag that their author might be dangerous, there is, as a YouTube official indicates, simply too much such material out there for any one "watchdog" to keep track of it. This is, of course, on top of proper concerns about freedom of speech that government monitoring, which comes up in the article, would raise.

Another question that arises, although not in the article, is the one I raised the other day: "What can be done to reduce such occurrences in the future?" The answer, the near-Pavlovian political discourse of our day notwithstanding, isn't "more government," but, as I suspected, getting it out of the way, so ordinary citizens familiar with such troubled individuals can act on such warnings -- of which an Internet presence is likely to be only one symptom, anyway.

Two commentators note a growing trend towards not institutionalizing people with severe mental illness. First, at Pajamas Media, Clayton Cramer observes:

In 1950, a person who was behaving oddly stood a good chance of being hospitalized. It might be for observation for a few days or a few weeks. If the doctors decided that this person was mentally ill, they would be committed, perhaps for a few months, perhaps longer. Hospital space was always at a premium, so generally, if someone was kept, there was a reason for it. The notion that large numbers of sane people were kept for no reason just has not survived my research efforts.

And Helen Smith, although I disagree with her wording -- there is no right to menace other people -- notes that the "rights" of the mentally ill are currently in intellectual fashion among the predominantly leftist intelligentsia. A law review article Smith coauthored was shot down at one journal for the sin of recommending that campuses assign a single person to handle reports of inappropriate behavior. One reviewer sniped that, she and her coauthors "must be working with John Ashcroft."

Here's a really disturbing motif: Unrestrained maniac goes on killing spree. Left wing rabble-rousers call for de facto censorship of (actual) political dissent, while continuing to crusade against keeping the dangerously insane from harming the general public. Thus, ordinary citizens become further marginalized from the political discourse, while also learning that any concerns they might have for their own safety will be left unaddressed.

-- CAV

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Here Come the Censors

A commenter writing from Britain yesterday says the following:

Anyone watching the BBC coverage would think violent tea party rhetoric and websites supported by Sarah Palin were responsible for this man's murderous rampage, despite the fact he was described by one of his classmates on a college course as "a left wing pothead."

I haven't exactly been glued to my television set, but I'd hardly be surprised to find news coverage here to be similarly poor, especially given how quickly the Democrats are racing to establish greater government control of guns (as noted yesterday) and, now, of the airwaves:

The shooting is cause for the country to rethink parameters on free speech, [Jim] Clyburn [D-SC] said from his office, just blocks from the South Carolina Statehouse. He wants standards put in place to guarantee balanced media coverage with a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, in addition to calling on elected officials and media pundits to use "better judgment."[bold and link added]

If Clyburn truly values individual freedom, he should follow his own advice about using "better judgment." But then, given his haste to equate political positions he does not agree with to incitement, I have a mild hunch that individual freedom isn't part of his agenda. (I set aside for the sake of argument the matters of whether the gunman was a "right-winger" or even sane when he acted.)

Clyburn used as an example a comment made by Sharron Angle, an unsuccessful U.S. senatorial candidate in Nevada, who said the frustrated public may consider turning to "Second Amendment remedies" for political disputes unless Congress changed course.

Clyburn said the man accused of shooting Giffords did just that.

This is ridiculous: Angle was plainly not seriously proposing an armed revolt, and "What would an insane or unreasonable person use as an excuse to commit murder?" is not a standard for weighing whether someone advocates the same.

Thanks to the fact that the government currently respects our right to debate political ideas, America is nowhere near the point that only armed revolt could restore freedom (or should be even seriously considered). It is noteworthy that Clyburn's proposal to restrict freedom of speech would push us closer to just such a point.

-- CAV

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What could have been done?

Jason Alexander, best known for portraying George Costanza in Seinfeld, offers a round of sarcastic congratulations in the wake of the Arizona shootings over the weekend. There is no originality or other intellectual merit about the piece -- and it is hardly the only example of obscenity of its kind out there.

The only thing that may be noteworthy about the piece is that, accidentally and rather circuitously, it brings up something I thought of when I considered what, if anything, might have prevented the Tucson massacre, which claimed six lives and put a Congresswoman in the hospital.

After ticking off the usual list of scapegoats -- anyone who opposes the left or doesn't support it enough for his satisfaction -- Alexander says the following:

In the end, reader/friend, I know that this is likely to be the mad act of a lone, sick man. We have had such men and such acts, always. But I do fear that our media, our internet, our health care system, our educational system, and the alienation we have thrust onto each other because of our desperation and ideologies - are going to create more such tragedies.

In other words, as with the first criminal-coddlers in the sixties; and everyone who claimed that doing anything war-like in national self-defense after the atrocities of September 11, 2001 would only "create more terrorists;" Alexander blames society for churning out people like this gunman.

I was first tempted to say of the above excerpt that Alexander was "covering his bases" in case anything came to light indicating that the gunman was, indeed, left-wing, insane, or both. But, in fact, both the timing of Alexander's tirade and that paragraph indicate that he regards the gunman's explicit motivation as irrelevant: The (capitalist) Devil made him do it, whether by failing to indoctrinate him sufficiently, leaving any need of his unfulfilled, or granting him access to dangerous things like guns. Indeed one of Alexander's fellow travelers in Congress is preparing a gun control bill as you read this. The target isn't guns, but personal freedom, as this deterministic view, and the fact that anything can be dangerous in the hands of a criminal both attest.

Representative Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), with her gun-control bill, and Alexander (who slams the NRA), with this rant, will profess concern with preventing such things from happening again, as far as is possible. But their focus on curtailing freedom raises a legitimate question for anyone who understands the value of personal freedom (including having the government recognize our right to own guns for self-defense): What can be done to reduce such occurrences in the future?

The answer isn't to have the state even further reduce the freedom of all; but for good men to speak up, and to work towards greater freedom so as to be able to be more effective when we do. It is noteworthy that one of the gunman's classmates (as well as their algebra instructor) saw him as dangerous, but couldn't do anything about him:

Class isn't dull as we have a seriously disturbed student in the class, and they are trying to figure out how to get rid of him before he does something bad, but on the other hand, until he does something bad, you can't do anything about him. Needless to say, I sit by the door.

I can think of a whole litany of reasons -- all due to government interference in our affairs -- why this student couldn't have simply been kicked out of school. (Of what form of illegal discrimination -- discrimination is not inherently good or bad -- would the school, the teacher, or this diarist have been accused?) In fact, I am confident that there would have been many things for which this student would have received a slap on the wrist or a little bit of psychological counseling, even if he had done "something bad," the concerns of his teachers and his fellow students be damned.

The shabby secret of this incident and, doubtless, many like it, is that there were blatant signs that this person was dangerous for quite some time, but that many of the individuals in a position to see the developing problem were stripped of power to do something about it. For example, students would not have to fear classmates like this for long, were schools privately-owned and -run and not subject to lawsuits due to irrational laws. Perhaps an early-enough discipline or expulsion would have at least identified (or further identified) this person as criminally-inclined. Perhaps more common gun ownership among the general, law-abiding population might have seen this rampage stopped earlier, or prevented altogether.

(I will state now that I have not carefully considered whether there ought to be a government requirement for background checks for prospective gun owners. However, it is clear to me that even if there weren't such a requirement, legitimate vendors could create a database of people to whom they would refuse to sell, and that the profit motive might cause them to err generously about who would get included on such a list.)

Those who advocate further restrictions on our freedom in the name of "protecting" us from the criminally-inclined have already failed. We don't need even more of their snake-oil. We need the government to return to its proper function, of protecting our individual rights, including (among other things) the right to associate (or not) with whom we please, and to bear arms in self-defense for those times that the government can't protect us.

-- CAV

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1-8-11 Hodgepodge

A Quick PSA

Martin Lindeskog warns against a scam site called "Shoppy Bag."

Let me add a warning of my own. I'd call this a phishing attack. [Update: Shoppy Bag's deceptive practice resembles phishing in some ways, but is not actually phishing.] I received a couple of emails out of the blue, supposedly from two people I know through blogging, only one of whom I have ever actually corresponded with. The emails claimed I'd been photo-tagged at a new, shopping-oriented social networking site. (I know both people to be participants in other social networking services.)

I decided to see whether this was the case and -- without first stopping to search "Shoppy Bag" -- clicked to see whether someone had posted a photo of me. As soon as I saw that I'd have to give my email address and its password (!) to proceed any further, I stopped right there and did the search I should have done before.

I am pretty sure that my account was not compromised, but in the process of learning about Shoppy Bag, I became concerned that, under certain conditions, it may be possible for an email account to be compromised simply by clicking through as I did. (Shoppy Bag logs on to such accounts and rifles through contact lists to generate new "invitations" to prospective members.)

If you receive email from (or about) Shoppy Bag, I recommend reporting it as a phishing attack. In GMail, you can do this by selecting the message and then the "Report phishing" option from the dropdown menu accessible from the arrowhead to the right of the "Reply" option.

Furthermore, if you click through such an email (or actually join Shoppy Bag), you should re-secure your account. Here is the protocol for GMail users.

Finally, learn from my mistake and search any unfamiliar entity that sends you email before you do anything else.

Weekend Reading

"We are not 'addicted' to oil any more than we are addicted to the myriad values it makes possible, like fresh food, imported electronics, going to work, or visiting loved ones." -- Alex Epstein, in "The Six Myths about Oil" at Fox News

"The real battle for capitalism is the battle over the question: Is it moral to pursue our own happiness?" -- Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, in "Can Arthur Brooks Beat Back Big Government?" at Forbes

"[W]hile Obamacare is suppressing genuine marketplace competition for medical services, it is also spurring a more sinister facsimile of competition - for political favors." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Best Health Care Political Pull Can Buy" at The Washington Times

"While the GOP's expressions of respect for the Constitution are a welcome change, they are not enough." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Will the GOP Walk the Walk on the Constitution?" at PajamasMedia

"A serene person is not passive and helpless, but also isn't a 'control freak.'" -- Michael Hurd, in "Is It Good to Feel Good?" at DrHurd.com

Three More from the Holidays

While I was unplugged over the holidays, Don Watkins pointed to several good holiday-themed pieces. Alex Epstein's take on New Year's resolutions, which I think I've read before, is especially worth your while.

From the Vault

Hah! I thought about this very subject just last night. Today, a year ago, I blogged about how much I like my silk thermals. They do indeed make all the difference up here during the winter.

On the subject of cold weather, I came up with an interesting analogy as I went to pick up pizza with my brothers in northern Mississippi, where it had snowed the day before, on Christmas. (It covered the ground nicely that day, and was already mostly gone.) I was explaining how gross snow gets when it never goes away and just sits there, accumulating grime for days and weeks on end, especially on roadsides and curbs.

"Southerners like snow the same way northerners like warm weather."

-- CAV

Updates

1-11-11: The Shoppy Bag scam although deceptive, is not actually phishing, as a commenter points out. Added update to first section.

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Leonard Peikoff's Q&A

If you haven't stopped by Leonard Peikoff's Q&A for some time, you might be pleasantly surprised by the much-improved format of the site. I think the webmaster made that change some time ago, but I'll mention it now anyway, if only to belatedly voice my appreciation.

I'm much more the reader than the listener, and generally download podcasts that interest me for later listening at times that I'm not actually on the Internet (and not in the mood to listen to music). So I typically check the site every week or so, download any new full episodes, and listen to a batch at some indeterminate future date.

Each episode typically features multiple questions. While it is always fun to see what Peikoff will address on any given day, I often learn about something I'd never thought of before, or find myself wishing I had a ready way to be able to go back to a given topic at some time in the future. I wished at the outset that there were an index to the topics covered, and a new feature of the site -- individual questions -- helps quite a bit in that regard, with the aid of a search engine.

The new format also provides a benefit to anyone who might be strapped for time, or have a specific question that might have been covered already, or wants to enjoy the give-and-take, but doesn't have fifteen minutes or more to spare at a given stray moment. Without further ado, I'll list a few individual questions I've particularly enjoyed as a result of being able to search or browse through the subject matter. I present them in no particular order.

• How do you explain the concepts of "religion" and "God" to pre-school-aged children?
• What is the thinking error in the following: "Good is completely intolerant of evil. Evil requires only the slightest compromise of principles to take over. It follows, therefore, that if we had a perfect civilization but the slightest lapse of mental focus took place, that lapse would threaten the whole civilization."
• If an individual was once hostile and harmful to Objectivism, but has since changed his opinion, should he now be accepted by Objectivism as a friend and ally?
• Do you plan to read either of the new Ayn Rand biographies? -- Notably, Peikoff debunks one recent biographer's deliberate implication that she was, personally, "granted access" to the (publicly-available) archives at the Ayn Rand Institute.
• What is your opinion of Objectivist clubs and advocacy groups on the internet?
• If I pay partial -- but not full -- attention to something, is that an evasion of reality? -- This is a good answer to a question someone new to Objectivism or unfamiliar with it might have.
• I have a friend who regulates the photos she puts up on Facebook, worrying that other people will deem her unprofessional. By creating a selective reality isn't she really distorting her picture? -- Ditto here, but I have to admit smiling when Peikoff says, "This is not a confessional." This is a perfect summary of the answer. That said, listen to the whole thing.
• Can two Objectivists disagree about a particular point without one of them being cast out of Objectivist society?
• What is a good approach for Objectivists to take in order to build consensus among themselves on any particular issue or topic? -- In the same vein as with the Facebook quote, I love, "Why do you want a consensus?" Again, context is crucial to appreciating this.

No matter whether a question is something I haven't considered before, or I have, but was curious about Peikoff's take on it, I invariably enjoy hearing his answer. Enjoy these. I certainly have.

-- CAV

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Minitruth Publishing

I have to agree with Ayn Rand that 1984 was an unrealistic novel, but I can't help alluding to it after hearing that a publishing company has decided to scrub the slur, "nigger" (as well as "Injun") from a great American classic that championed racial equality.

Next month, NewSouth Books is issuing a new edition of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Twain's classic depiction of the dehumanization of blacks in the Old South - minus the single word that most effectively makes the point. In its place in the new book will be the word "slave."

I have commented at length on why it is wrong to ban such words -- which, like anything else are not intrinsically bad or good -- from public discourse. Nevertheless, the New York Daily News succinctly explains why this is such a bad move:

[I]ts casual use makes Huck's growing realization that runaway slave Jim is a man, and a superlative one at that, a truly remarkable transformation. Which is why all 219 uses must stay in "Huck Finn."

I grew up in Mississippi just after the Civil Rights era, and the parochial schools I attended were racially integrated. I recall both a time when I was very young and had basically no concept of racial divisions of humanity, and a time, later, when race was, if not the first thing, among the among first things I noticed about a new acquaintance.

By considering my own intellectual development and observing that of others, I concluded long ago that the effects of this word (and others like it) on the young are profound. The frowned-upon and declining -- but still somewhat common use of that term -- played a big part in forming a habit that Rand describes only too well, of "differentiat[ing] between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men."

How? By shifting one's focus from character to appearance, subtly framing what should always be a moral evaluation of an individual human being as, instead, mere identification of someone as a member of a breed. That is a terrible and crippling mental habit that can take decades to root out, and it can affect even those raised by very good parents, like myself. Thanks to them, I was never explicitly a racist, but I still picked up enough of this from others that regretfully have to admit that I used to give race weight in how I initially assessed others.

The following passage dramatizes only too well the kind of process someone has to go through thanks to such terms:

It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't done that one if I'd a knowed it would make him feel that way.

You need that ugly word to make the point, because anybody can be a slave, and the lesson here is to become able to recognize a fellow human being when you see one.

If your child is ever assigned Huckleberry Finn as a reading assignment, make sure he gets to read the real thing.

-- CAV

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The Minimalist "Lifestyle"

John Cook takes note of "two contrasting articles on minimalism," one humorous and the other somewhat defensive. The following passage from the first article is too good to pass up.

The zenith ... is a calm geek, sitting in a bare room with a desk upon which sits only a MacBook Air, his backpack of possessions on one side, the broadband internet cable available but unplugged, fingers ready to type into the empty white screen of a minimalist editor.

Minus the geek, it seems like I see this very picture every other time the subject of work environments arises at my favorite productivity blogs, so call me (very, very loosely) a minimalist who, as Cook puts it, am "able to get a chuckle out of it."

I agree generally with Cook's criticisms of the two articles, but not with his contention that "[g]eneric discussions of minimalism are fluff," but that's not my main point here.

More interesting to me is the whole idea of "extreme minimalism." (And by this, I do not mean the literal, mathematical meaning of minimal that Cook brings up, but a common misconception: that one should not apply principles "to extremes.") Although neither Vivek Haldar nor Kirin Dave actually use the term, that's what I think each is arguing about. (To get an idea of what I think most people mean by "extreme minimalism" -- not to mention a good laugh -- see these satirical Unclutterer posts. Or are these examples of Poe's Law?)

Haldar is saying, to use common (but mistaken) parlance, "Extreme minimalism is ridiculous," while Kirin Dave, feeling attacked, retorts that one should be, "aware that every decision [one] make[s] is a value proposition." Both are partly right, and both are partly wrong.

The problem touching off this debate isn't whether one should apply abstract principles to one's life at all, but how to apply such principles to one's life. The geek is funny precisely because some distractions are unavoidable and some distractions have value; and the proper standard of value is one's life -- and not, "Is this a distraction?"

In his zeal to minimize distractions, the geek's mistake isn't that he consistently applies a principle, but that he misapplies it. To take full advantage of working without distractions, one must first understand when a laser-like focus is called for, and when, say, letting one's mind explore things that strike its fancy is called for. (I don't use it myself, but I have even run across a task management system that attempts to put mental wandering to some use.)

And if I come home from, say, a really good play, do I keep the ticket stub as a memento or throw it away? With life as my standard of value, I might defer that decision (even if in the form of tacking it to a bulletin board). But suppose I waste ten minutes agonizing over whether a ticket stub on my bulletin board is clutter. Was that really worth ten irreplaceable minutes of my life? No.

One can't apply principles robotically. Those who do so, in the intellectual chaos of our time, give superficial credibility to the smear against "extremism." And, oftentimes, those who react against the so-called extremists give surface credibility to whim-worship.

To claim that a principle applies universally to all men is not to advocate that we all become robots, and to insist that each man look at how such a principle applies to his particular situation is not to rebel against principles as such. Principles name absolute truths, but applying them to one's life requires keeping one's full context in mind.

-- CAV

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That Wasn't Capitalism

In a Forbes piece on California's "Third Brown Era," Joel Kotkin paints the following portrait of Edmund "Pat" Brown, father of that state's current governor.

Pat Brown was a committed progressive who actually believed in both social and economic progress. He did not focus on re-distributing wealth or expanding bureaucratic controls; his priority was to use government to help generate greater opportunities for Californians.

Really?

Kotkin contradicts his claim that the elder Brown did not redistribute wealth or expand his state's bureaucracy in the very next paragraph!

Under Pat roughly 20% of the state budget was devoted to capital outlays. He expanded wealth creating infrastructure such as freeways and the State Water Project, which created vast expanses of new, highly fertile farmland. He also increased the state’s parklands so that middle-class Californians could enjoy the state’s unmatched natural beauty.

This may be Kotkin's idea of contrasting father and son, but I'm either seeing a blank page or a polar bear sleeping in the snow here.

Using state money for "capital outlays" unrelated to the proper purpose of government -- and such improper outlays include such things as highways, schools, and parks -- is a form redistribution of wealth to the extent that such money comes from taxation, and the state running (or supervising) any given sector of the economy necessarily entails a government bureaucracy. That the recipients of the loot aren't all darlings of the left does not alter those facts.

Our recent election results indicate that the American people are not comfortable with the government confiscating our wealth or running our economy. But to get that monkey off our backs, we have to be very clear about the exact nature of the problem. The last thing we need to do now is bless off the above laying-of-groundwork for massive government expansion as economic freedom -- any more than we should be fooled by mere changes in the form of government control, such as many that are passed off as "privatization."

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo.

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The Man Who Never Was

I'll ease back into blogging with something I ran into before my Christmas break...

Some time ago, as I perused a sports site, the subject of NFL quarterback busts piqued my interest, so I looked up a couple I recalled from way back. One of those was Todd Marinovich, who was a hot prospect for the Raiders at one time. (As a long-suffering Saints fan, I often found myself following the Raiders since at least they were good, at least back then.) In any event, the Wikipedia entry on Marinovich led me to an Esquire article that is practically a case study in how not to raise a child for excellence -- as well as being a cautionary tale about fundamental errors in thinking.

The opening picture of sixteen-month-old Marvin -- his mother changed his name to "Todd" later -- holding up a full-sized football and wearing an over-sized helmet would be adorable were it not for the context of the stage mother-like upbringing as a quarterback (rather than as a human being) he would be subjected to at the hands of his father, Marv, who had already ruined his own professional football career by "overtraining:"

Drafted by the L. A. Rams of the NFL and by the Oakland Raiders of the AFL, Marv "ran, lifted, pushed the envelope to the nth degree" in order to prepare for the pros. One exercise, he says: eleven-hundred-pound squats, with the bar full of forty-five-pound plates, with hundred-pound dumbbells chained and hanging on the ends because he couldn't get any more plates to fit. "And then I would rep out," he recalls. "I hadn't yet figured out that speed and flexibility were more important than weight and bulk. I overtrained so intensely that I never recovered."

I have never played football, but I feel quite comfortable expressing my utter amazement that a player could make such an error. Strength and bulk are just two things a football player needs, as are speed and flexibility, not to mention a few other things the elder Marinovich still hadn't "figured out" when he "turned to sports training" (!) after scuttling his own career. Tragically, Todd would bear the brunt of these other omissions.

At this point, I'll quickly note the cautionary value of this tale, insofar as Marv Marinovich's thinking errors go. It is always easier to see someone else's mistakes, and the trick to profiting from such a lesson can be in discerning whether something about such errors applies to one's own life and, if so, how. The kind of error Marv Marinovich kept making strikes me as a textbook example of something I'm still struggling to conceptualize, but which I've seen loosely called "over-thinking" in other contexts. He seems to zero in on some goal -- strength training, or producing a "perfect quarterback" -- to the near-exclusion of other considerations -- speed and flexibility, or the fact that human beings have many more needs than a mere game can fulfill -- even when those other considerations are actually relevant to the goal that holds his myopic focus.

Certainly, whatever else this sad tale can teach us will require lots of thought, but regardless of whether one might make some version of Marv Marinovich's particular error, one general lesson stands out to me: If one has made several major mistakes in the past, it might be helpful to consider whether they have anything in common.

But back to Todd Marinovich. The article is very long, but is quite fascinating on some levels. Think of it as a sort of sports-page equivalent to Ayn Rand's essay on education, "The Comprachicos," and bear in mind the following excerpt.

The first five or six years of a child's life are crucial to his cognitive development. They determine, not the content of his mind, but its method of functioning, its psycho-epistemology.

Todd Marinovich was raised in a highly regimented manner -- I doubt he really had the chance to decide for himself whether he actually wanted to play football -- and found himself on unfamiliar ground outside that milieu. This started in high school, where a life-long spiral of drug addiction began. That's no small wonder, given the hierarchical nature of values, the role of volition in choosing and pursuing values, and the need to prioritize in order to achieve really important goals. If the younger Marinovich's body and part of his mind were molded to make him into a superior quarterback, the rest of his mind was left without any guidance, or any opportunity to gain experience living as a human being.

Marv Marinovich appeared to succeed for a time: Until his son ultimately proved unable to handle personal freedom, he was lionized by sports media. One headline read, "ROBO QB: THE MAKING OF A PERFECT ATHLETE." But after the publicity (and Todd Marinovich's career) had long died down, the elder Marinovich's former wife would say that, "He didn't do reality too well," and his son would be left in the same boat, and unable to answer (or face?) the following question, "How much effect do you think that Marv and sports and all contributed to you turning to drugs?"

As we saw with another football story featuring a player whose early development was stunted, it is not too late for Todd Marinovich to turn things around (as a man), but he faces quite a struggle.

-- CAV

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