Potemkin Metropolis

A few days ago, reader Jim Woods responded to my post about the Chinese housing bubble by pointing out an incredible YouTube video by Journeyman Pictures on huge, modern, and mostly empty cities being built in China to provide "investment" opportunities. I unfortunately can't embed the video here, and it is a good fifteen minutes long, but I can't recommend it highly enough.

In one of the most ironic moments of documentary film-making I have ever witnessed, a couple living in a Beijing slum about to be razed for yet another luxury development is frustrated about being unable to afford their own home. "The government needs to intervene," the husband says at one point.

Sadly, a man in a later interview notes the possibility of a Marxist type of uprising if the situation continues. This is both exactly what you'd expect of a populace steeped from childhood in the idea that government appropriation of property is a legitimate (and practical) solution to basically everything, and precisely the last thing China needs.

--- In Other News ---

I think the comparison is between apples and oranges (sorry!) in the sense that Apple is a primarily a hardware company and Google is primarily a service company, but Jesse Brown makes good points in his argument that Google is the more revolutionary company.

David Letterman shows us how to respond to an Islamist death threat. (via Amy Peikoff)

Does Rick Perry believe any of his rhetoric? Christopher Hitchens asks this question explicitly regarding his religious positions, and I wonder the same thing about Perry's oft-supposed fiscal conservatism after learning of his past praise of Hillary Clinton's efforts to further socialize medicine. So what if this letter was written before all the details of the plan came out? I regard it as revealing that his tack was not to question her approach, but to lobby for his particular pressure groups.

Fans, Fission, and Fear

Over at Brave New Climate is a very good post that looks at the parallels between a modern superstition -- the notion, common in South Korea, that sleeping in a room with a running fan can be fatal -- and anti-nuclear hysteria. I particularly like the following passage:

It's only natural to be cautious about something new, and bundle what information you have into a grab-bag to establish a first-take danger zone around the thing in question, especially if what is either known or believed about it suggests problems. The trouble is, these preliminary responses are supposed to be just that, an initial assessment followed up with a more in-depth investigation to clarify the danger. They should not be taken for a map of uncharted territory forever off limits to understanding. The second step is the beginning of the journey into proper insight from which sound judgements can be made. It cannot be sidestepped without aborting that journey and rendering you helpless when assessing the potential danger.

Consider the matter of fan death. Due to a misattribution of cause and effect, a whole nation is now convinced that it's better for the elderly to put up with a heat wave than cool themselves down with an electric fan. People have almost certainly died unnecessarily from this belief. These sorts of superstitions are a direct danger to people's health, yet they often stand unchallenged. This is a lesson which needs to be learned by the citizens of modern nations if we are to make wise choices for the future. Unchallenged assumptions need to be challenged, and the most fatal path is to react with impression and instinct.

The article takes note of some of the more interesting rationalizations -- most obviously wrong to anyone with a decent understanding of science -- for these fears, and offers a reasonable theory for how the superstition arose in the first place. But there is a shortcoming: The article does not account adequately for the role of epistemology in the rise and continued existence of this strange idea throughout South Korean culture, and this drawback is most evident in the type and degree of effort the author holds it would take to eradicate this not-even-mistaken belief:

... None of the above 'explanations' are worth anything except possibly as research material for a study in psychology, but their existence seems to satisfy some need on the part of believers for a body of material to refer to, and besides that, "Everybody knows it's true!". This belief is now so entrenched in the South Korean national psyche that it would likely take generations of counter-propaganda to root it out. No-one has any inclination to undertake such a task, so they're probably stuck with this idiotic meme.

I agree that it could take a long time to wipe out this idea, but not because it would take counter-propaganda. Considering the various "explanations," and the near-basic level of scientific knowledge required to refute any of them, what is clearly required is for the population to adopt a more generally rational approach to knowledge. In particular, anyone with the habit of relating one item of knowledge to another would quickly reject any of the "explanations," if he somehow ended up considering them seriously at all, regardless of his level of scientific training. (It is at this point, with the science of nuclear power being less generally accessible, that the parallel Craig Schumacher draws runs into some difficulties.)

For that habit to take root in a culture is something that might require a huge amount of effort and education in the proper principles of rational thought, but once that happened, the pervasiveness of superstitions of all kinds would quickly subside, with reality serving as universal "counter-propaganda." Belief in fan deaths would dissipate in the cool breeze of reason.

-- CAV

Updates

8-31-11: Corrected "Barry Brook" to read "Craig Schumacher."

Self-Imposed Limits

In Foreign Policy, Charles Kurzman considers at length the following question: "Why is it so hard to find a suicide bomber these days?" He introduces the question and his discussion by considering an incompetent attack in North Carolina that failed to cause even one fatality, pulled off by someone who was easily deterred by gun laws, and who didn't even know the difference between the two major sects of his religion.

If terrorist methods are as widely available as automobiles, why are there so few Islamist terrorists? In light of the death and devastation that terrorists have wrought, the question may seem absurd. But if there are more than a billion Muslims in the world, many of whom supposedly hate the West and desire martyrdom, why don't we see terrorist attacks everywhere, every day?

Kurzman comes up with five answers, from which I'll excerpt single-sentence quotes below. My interpretations follow each in bold.

• [M]ost Muslims oppose terrorist violence. In addition to possible differences of interpretation of Islam, I would credit cultural influences outside Islam, and free will and decency for this.
  
• [M]uch of the support for Islamist radicalism is soft. This can be another manifestation of the above, or due to personal hypocrisy.
  
• Islamist revolutionaries are divided, and that is a third reason for their relatively small numbers. True, but how important is this?
• [T]he combination of democratic politics and cultural conservatism is far more popular among Muslims than the revolutionaries' anti-democratic violence. This is a rehash of the first reason, but perhaps also with a measure of the second-handedness I'll discuss below thrown in.
  
• The more that terrorists target Muslims, the less popular the terrorists become -- the fifth reason that their numbers are so low. Both legitimate self-interest and mere tactical considerations can manifest in this way. Regarding the latter: With something like CAIR and an aimless established government around, who needs terrorism?
  

One thing Kurzman leaves out is what role the terrorists' motivating factor, Islam itself, might play. If one accepts an ideology on blind faith that demands unquestioning obedience, exactly how enterprising will one be? This plays out in different ways and to different degrees depending on how strongly one accepts such an ideology.

In my experience, most people are rather second-handed. That is, they are mentally passive, and accept things, like their religious beliefs through a sort of osmosis from those around them. It takes some degree of independence to question something like one's religion -- or the myriad other cultural influences one grows up with. (And that independence will be ultimately be self-defeating if the conclusion one reaches is to stop using his mind.) This fact works against both apostasy and radicalism, but more so the latter, given what Islam demands of its followers: complete mental surrender. (The rampant relativism of our culture, however, can and often does make Islam look like viable guidance, anyway.) So, someone who is Moslem "by default" will be unlikely to go out on a limb to embark on a career of religiously-motivated murder.

But what of the truly radical? To what do they adhere so rigorously? A religion that neuters their minds by demanding the very opposite qualities that a truly effective warrior would need. People can compartmentalize, and act very shrewdly in isolated aspects of their lives, while adhering to ideas that, if acted upon consistently, would kill them. (And shrewdness is much better-motivated by the prospect of personal gain than by that of annihilation.) Despite Kurzman's opening example of Mohammed Taheri-Azar, someone with an incomplete understanding of his religion, the astounding lack of mental acuity and initiative he displays epitomize the end result of someone who has completely surrendered his mind. The leaders of any movement, even Islamic totalitarianism, must necessarily be able to function above Taheri-Azar's level, but what kind of foot soldiers will such a movement produce?

I think that last question is yet another answer to Kurzman's question.

-- CAV

8-27-11 Hodgepodge

Quotable

Earlier this week, a Wall Street Journal blog ran a collection of quotes from Steve Jobs. I particularly like this one:

[I]t's a disservice to constantly put things in this radical new light -- that it's going to change everything. Things don't have to change the world to be important.

Those aren't just words to do business by; they are words to live by. See also his quote regarding for whom he and his colleagues designed computers.

Weekend Reading

"So now the Left has a new line of attack. Let's tell the public that the rich are intrinsically flawed." -- Charlotte Cushman, in "The 'Selfish' Rich" at The American Thinker

"[W]hile recent volatility has reinforced markets' occasional drama, the biggest and most impactful moves undoubtedly occur over time." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Is This the Dollar's Great Decline" at SmartMoney

Revamped Lexicon

One of my favorite web-based resources is the on-line edition of The Ayn Rand Lexicon, but I have long been mildly frustrated by the inability to link to an individual quote from within a topic. Via email, I have learned that this feature has now been added to the web site.

For example, on the topic Pragmatism, there are seven quotes. In the past, if I were making a point directly related to (or excerpting from) only the second, I could have only linked to the topic page, and then said something like, "Scroll down to the quote starting with, 'In the whirling Heraclitean flux ...'"

Now, there are two ways to send readers directly to a relevant quote, both of which allow readers to see that Rand had more to say: the quote within the topic page or the quote on its own page. Follow the links to see how this works for the second quote.

For other bloggers who might be interested in taking advantage of this feature, the URLs for the two individual quotes are formed as follows:

aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/pragmatism.html#order_2
aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/pragmatism/2.html

Whether you want the reader to immediately see other context for a given quote or concentrate on just one quote, there is now an easy and effective way to do so.

The Best Learn from Failure

An article about five product lines killed by former Apple CEO Steve Jobs notes the following about the Power Mac G4 Cube, which was his own idea:

While Apple hoped the computer would be a smash hit, few customers could see their way to buying the monitor-less Cube when the all-in-one iMac could be purchased for less, and a full-sized PowerMac G4 introduced a month later with the same specs could be had for $1,599 [i.e., two hundred dollars less --ed]. Apple attempted to re-price and re-spec the Cube in the following months, but Jobs ended up murdering one of his own darlings, suspending production of the model exactly one year after its release. While the Cube's design is still revered (it's part of the MoMA's collection), it proved consumers won't buy a product for its design alone.

And we all know what happened after that...

-- CAV

The Next Wonder Drug?

Not long ago, I heard about a drug that shows promise as a broad-spectrum antiviral.The below comes from the second link.

In a paper published July 27 in the journal PLoS One, the researchers tested their drug against 15 viruses, and found it was effective against all of them -- including rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, H1N1 influenza, a stomach virus, a polio virus, dengue fever and several other types of hemorrhagic fever.

The drug works by targeting a type of RNA produced only in cells that have been infected by viruses. "In theory, it should work against all viruses," says Todd Rider, a senior staff scientist in Lincoln Laboratory's Chemical, Biological, and Nanoscale Technologies Group who invented the new technology.

Because the technology is so broad-spectrum, it could potentially also be used to combat outbreaks of new viruses, such as the 2003 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak, Rider says.

The paper linked in the above excerpt reports that the regimen "appeared promising in proof-of-concept trials with adult ... mice."

-- CAV

What Wisconsin Means

For anyone who didn't follow the news regarding the public employee unions' protracted battle with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker over his budget repair" legislation, George Will outlines the consequences of their having lost that battle. I'd categorize those consequences, broadly, as weakening the union political machine and improving the morale of non-leftists (although Will doesn't put it this way).

Here is part of the first:

[U]nions must hold annual recertification votes. ...

[T]eachers unions may no longer automatically deduct dues from members’ paychecks. After Colorado in 2001 required public employees unions to have annual votes reauthorizing collection of dues, membership in the Colorado Association of Public Employees declined 70 percent. In 2005, Indiana stopped collecting dues from unionized public employees; in 2011, there are 90 percent fewer dues-paying members. In Utah, the end of automatic dues deductions for political activities in 2001 caused teachers' payments to fall 90 percent. After a similar law passed in 1992 in Washington state, the percentage of teachers making such contributions declined from 82 to 11.

The following, pertaining to the second, is encouraging for different reasons:

Walker has refuted the left's sustaining conviction that a leftward-clicking ratchet guarantees that liberalism's advances are irreversible.

I wouldn't say that this conviction is unique to the left: How many times do you hear conservatives say, basically, that it is impossible to uproot one entitlement program or another?

I do not know the details of Walker's legislation, but I think it's a safe bet that there are aspects of it with which I would be unhappy. Still, Walker's victory does demonstrate that the entrenched institutions of the left are far from invincible.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected a typo.

Grasping at Straws

The other day, I learned of an admission of philosophical bankruptcy that was particularly amusing because of its resemblance to the plot of a B-grade science fiction movie:

It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.

Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control -- and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.

Or -- because a civilization doesn't become "advanced" on the basis of making broad, knee-jerk conclusions based on single data points taken "from afar" -- they might dig slightly deeper, and learn that the scientists we revere endorse suicidal political prescriptions and create bogeymen out of whole cloth to scare the rest of us into accepting their orders. On such a basis, the aliens might conclude that, with such wannabe witch doctors in charge, we'll revert to savagery within a few generations, and settle here when there are fewer troublesome natives around. Or, maybe a truly advanced civilization would not automatically regard the success of another civilization as a threat. Or...

We could play this silly game until the cows come home.

It astounds me without fail when I see something like this coming from people who have achieved success in a discipline (e.g., science), presumably because they are rigorous about what they regard as evidence and how they draw conclusions from such evidence. To ask a partially rhetorical question: Why on earth do such people turn around and treat another discipline (e.g., philosophy) as if whatever they happen to imagine might or ought to be true should be treated like a sound conclusion based on actual evidence?

-- CAV

Perry and the Constitution

Anyone with any doubts that Rick Perry is a theocrat can mosey on over to a Yahoo! News writeup of seven changes the governor of Texas would like to make to the Constitution, as he explains in his book, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington. They look like quite the grab-bag at first glance, but they are uniformly bad or unnecessary:

1. Abolish lifetime tenure for federal judges by amending Article III, Section I of the Constitution.
2. Congress should have the power to override Supreme Court decisions with a two-thirds vote.
3. Scrap the federal income tax by repealing the Sixteenth Amendment.
4. End the direct election of senators by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.
5. Require the federal government to balance its budget every year.
6. The federal Constitution should define marriage as between one man and one woman in all 50 states.
7. Abortion should be made illegal throughout the country.

Notice that Perry's first two proposed changes are both direct attacks on the independence of the judiciary. The third sounds good, but would be unnecessary if the electorate really were in favor of lower taxes, and (if not), it would be easily circumvented with another tax. The fourth is unnecessary. The fifth is absurd: In a time of national emergency (like a real war), the government should be able to borrow and, absent a free banking system, the amendment could be overridden by the confiscatory mechanism like inflation, anyway. Finally, the last two reveal as a misconception that Perry considers "states' rights" a check against tyranny, or (and, much more important) that he believes the Constitution serves as a check on government power. That last is particularly disturbing, given Perry's track record as someone who is good at quietly amassing lots of power.

If we elect Perry, we may well find ourselves wishing we had an incompetent President.

-- CAV

Three on Context

This morning, I encountered three items, about completely different topics, that all illustrate the value of acquiring as much context about any given endeavor as possible.

First, in communications, Eric Raymond and Rick Moen explain "How to Ask Questions the Smart Way." For anyone who wants help on computer forums or has ever wondered why computer forums have the apparently contradictory reputations for rudeness and great service, this is a must read.

Regarding the rudeness, real or imagined:

We're (largely) volunteers. We take time out of busy lives to answer questions, and at times we're overwhelmed with them. So we filter ruthlessly. In particular, we throw away questions from people who appear to be losers in order to spend our question-answering time more efficiently, on winners.

And what's a winner in the books of someone with expertise who invites questions from ordinary people?

The first thing to understand is that hackers actually like hard problems and good, thought-provoking questions about them. If we didn't, we wouldn't be here. If you give us an interesting question to chew on we'll be grateful to you; good questions are a stimulus and a gift. Good questions help us develop our understanding, and often reveal problems we might not have noticed or thought about otherwise. Among hackers, "Good question!" is a strong and sincere compliment.

In other words, with limited time on their hands, hackers end up taking shortcuts -- like ignoring subject lines that say only, "Help me!" or skipping posts with poor spelling and punctuation -- as they filter a huge input for interesting problems to think about.

Just knowing what a hacker is interested in will help most people realize that a brief description of the problem in the subject line and a post that sets enough context (and, say, eliminates common possibilities) will make one more likely to receive help. But, in case that's not enough, or one wants to know other things that might give the impression that one isn't worth a hacker's time, Raymond and Moen go into detail.

The second item deals with the problem of weeding out phony Internet reviews, which have become a problem on commercial web sites.

"We evolved over 60,000 years by talking to each other face to face," said Jeffrey T. Hancock, a Cornell professor of communication and information science who worked on the project. "Now we're communicating in these virtual ways. It feels like it is much harder to pick up clues about deception."

The first link describes some of the things computer algorithms use to flag reviews as possibly fake, including over-use of personal pronouns, liberal use of adverbs, and lots of exclamation points. Coupled with the fact noted in the companion article that such reviews tend to be short on details, it looks like such reviewers are hoping to distract the reader with how "excited" they are about the product. It is thus interesting to see that we can, basically, program "bullshit detectors," due to the tactic used by many liars to substitute emotions for facts.

The third item shows why competing only on price is usually foolish, whether or not a businessman truly appreciates the full costs of operating. (The author has a great example of apportioning the costs of an employee.)

Over the last 20 or so years, I have worked in oil, electrical equipment, engineering, computing and marketing. In every industry I have seen multiple examples of firms competing with prices that are too low to sustain business over the longer term. In every case when these businesses fail, they were immediately replaced with someone with the same strategy. There will always be people prepared to run unprofitable business, mostly because they don't know they are doing it. [minor edits, bold added]

Note that a good businessman has to account for the cluelessness of these competitors, in some form or fashion. Knowing about the problem helps.

Whether one is asking a question, shopping, or trying to make a living, gaining as much knowledge as possible is plainly crucial. The first two examples show, however, that filtering out knowledge from garbage is a huge problem, both because poor communication can lead knowledgeable people to discount a valid message as garbage, and because skillful misuse of communication can lead good people down the primrose path. Becoming aware of how communication can go awry is thus a crucial part of functioning well in our division-of-labor society.

-- CAV

8-20-11 Hodgepodge

One, Both, or Neither?

Regulars here have heard of the "impostor syndrome," but through Scott Hanselman, I learned that the opposite problem has a name, too. Hanselman quotes Wikipedia:

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes. [links omitted]

Hanselman writes about a problem all of us face: objectively judging our ability and performance. I think many people tend towards one type of error or the other. However, I think it's also possible for one person to make both types of error, although I would guess that this would normally depend on the area of expertise on which such an individual is attempting to gauge himself.

Weekend Reading

"Let me translate: The only argument with any chance of success in today's Supreme Court starts by admitting that Congress has authority to control every single economic, 'activity' known to mankind -- farming, building, manufacturing, transporting, storing, insuring, selling, buying, leasing, practicing medicine, operating a hospital, you name it -- but then denies any authority to invade the sacred right of 'inactivity.'" -- Thomas Bowden, in "How Important Is the Obamacare Litigation?" at The Daily Caller

"Four decades on, a comparative review shows Nixon's decision [to abandon the gold standard] to have been a catastrophic error, and indicates the need for fundamental monetary reform." -- John Allison and John Chapman, in "It's Time for Pro-Growth Monetary Reform," at The American Magazine

"As a former gold standard advocate, I concede that I was wrong on the issue." -- Wendy Milling, in "Forget Gold, Let's Denationalize Money" at RealClear Markets

"At what point does the chance co-location of two houses (and all the property lines and restrictions that go with it) develop into a warm fuzzy friendship?" -- Micheal Hurd, in "Be a First-Class Neighbor" at DrHurd.com

"Funny how nobody has an issue with computer trading when stocks rise, only when they sell off." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "High-Frequency Trading Fears Do Not Compute" at SmartMoney

"In contrast to 1971, and the four decades since as a fiat currency tied to Washington's waning fiscal credibility, a dollar today buys 98% less gold, 96% less oil, 85% less in terms of a basket of consumer goods, and 39% less even against major foreign currencies. The fiat paper dollar also has lost 83% in terms of toilet paper." -- Richard Salsman, in "Gold, Reagan and the Reds: From Degraded Dollar to Downgraded Debt" at Forbes

"In effect, macroeconomics was a two-step public relations strategy for those seeking to finance the entitlement state. Step 1 was to define the goal as aggregate spending increase (which, of course, you always refer to as "economic growth"). Step 2 was to have the central bank engineer a long-term expansion of the money supply." -- Mikiel de Bary, in "Macroeconomics and the Entitlement State" at American Thinker

My Two Cents

Even among today's handful of thought-provoking pieces pertinent to the fortieth anniversary of the abandonment of the gold standard, Wendy Milling's column provides the most interesting look at the problems caused by fiat money and, more important, how to reestablish sound money. Anyone who considers himself an advocate of the gold standard should read her piece carefully.

Balzac on Coffee

A Q&A by Leonard Peikoff on whether one can morally sanction the use of caffeine indirectly reminds me of an amusing essay by Honore de Balzac on "The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee."

-- CAV

Millions of Tiny Diamonds

There's nothing like a new scientific discovery to remind us of what a fascinating world we live in:

Dr [Wuzong] Zhou said: "A colleague at another university said to me: 'Of course no-one knows what a candle flame is actually made of.'

"I told him I believed science could explain everything eventually, so I decided to find out."

Using a new sampling technique, assisted by his student Mr Zixue Su, he invented himself, he was able to remove particles from the centre of the flame -- something never successfully achieved before -- and found to his surprise that a candle flame contains all four known forms of carbon.

Dr Zhou said: "This was a surprise because each form is usually created under different conditions."

Among the forms of carbon are diamond nanoparticles, and the discovery could lead to cheaper methods of synthesizing diamonds.

-- CAV

The enemy of my enemy ...

... is not necessarily my friend.

Via HBL come three must-read articles about a couple of the early GOP front-runners for the 2012 presidential election, both of whom currently have significant Tea Party support. The first discusses a fundamentalist Christian movement to which Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry both have ties.

Since I knew he was from a family of Holocaust survivors, I asked him what he thought of the mandate that all non-Christians would have to convert or die. Oscar said that if his relatives refused to become Christians or submit to forced exile, then they would suffer the civil penalty for practicing idolatry. He would carry out the execution himself if called upon to do so by the Christian state.

Oscar was the first self-consciously Christian fascist I ever met, but he wasn't the last. Eventually, the movement, which was scorned by many leaders of the Religious Right for being "too crazy," went underground as its leaders died or fought among themselves.

Today, two of the leading Republican presidential candidates, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, reportedly have ties to the Dominionist movement. ...

The second goes into more detail about Bachmann's sordid intellectual and political past.

Bachmann and her political consultants also know that her inoffensive ode to liberty is necessary because many voters don't respond well to religious language. The more Bachmann talks about God, the more she is likely to be asked about [Francis] Schaeffer, [John] Eidsmoe, [David A.] Noebel, and some of the other exotic influences on her thinking. The success of her campaign will rest partly on her ability to keep these influences, which she has talked about for years, out of the public discussion. As I started getting deeper into a conversation with her about Schaeffer, she abruptly ended the interview. She said she had to leave for an appearance on "Hannity" but would try to set up another time to talk. I didn't hear from her again. Her press secretary later told me that Bachmann "wasn't comfortable with the line of questions, and that's why there wasn't a follow-up conversation." [minor format edits]

Schaeffer is a fundamentalist who "condemns the influence of the Italian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, Darwin, secular humanism, and postmodernism"; Eidsmoe is a fundamentalist legal activist who has been disinvited from a Tea party appearance because of a previous appearance at a national convention of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens; and Noebel is, basically a fundamentalist conspiracy nut.

The third piece notes that Rick Perry is, in its title's words, a "massive statist." This article reiterates a fact I mentioned a few days ago (i.e., that most of the new jobs in Texas have been in the government sector), but it elaborates further on why Texas has been less severely effected by the nation's current moribund economic conditions. It isn't because Rick Perry is its governor.

All of these are very good, but the first and the last of these are quick must-reads, and show that a second term for Barack Obama is not necessarily the worst thing that could befall America.

-- CAV

How is this principled?

Froma Harrop, a typical modern pragmatist (scroll down) with leftist sensibilities, floored me this morning with her latest, a column in the Detroit News titled, "There's Something to Be Said for States' Rights." What floored me wasn't that a lefty would take a shine to that poorly-understood aspect of our federal system of government, but that she described a stand taken by Texas Governor (and presidential candidate) Rick Perry as, "principled."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry ... recently raised some conservative hackles by saying it was "fine" for New York to legalize gay marriage. But then he lowered some conservative hackles by characterizing abortion as a states' rights issue. Perry deems himself "pro-life," and we know that letting states ban abortion requires first overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that effectively legalized the procedure.

...

"You can't believe in the 10th Amendment for a few issues," Perry said, "and then, (for) something that doesn't suit you, say, 'We'd rather not have the states decide that.'" That principled statement is one drug war advocates should recall when federal agents invade the backyards of Californians growing medical marijuana consistent with their state laws.

Of course, such states' rights arguments have been used to defend such evils as legalized racial discrimination. And a patchwork of 50 different sets of laws on the same matter can cause headaches.

I have already discussed states' rights here, and won't belabor the point, but I will note that, unless it is understood within the context of a proper government protecting individual rights, the idea can easily lead to the establishment of fifty local tyrannies rather than one national tyranny. Harrop herself plainly realizes this on some level, given her brief allusion to a thing called Jim Crow.

Oh, and "headaches." (!)

And yet, Harrop goes ahead and calls Perry "principled." This is what I wish to focus on for the moment.

If a principle is, as Ayn Rand put it, "a fundamental, primary, or general truth, on which other truths depend," by means of which we become able to "set ... long-range goals and evaluate the concrete alternatives of any given moment," which principle is Perry following here? Harrop's mention of Jim Crow conveniently eliminates, "Government should protect individual rights," for us.

So, perhaps Harrop means something like, "To enjoy the benefits of rule of law, we must all obey the law, and the government must uniformly apply the law." This sounds plausible enough, until we recall Perry's eagerness to speak about secession: Unless one really is prepared to rebel against a tyranny, the way to apply this principle is to change the law by, say, provoking test cases, or introducing legislation in order to eliminate or change laws one disagrees with, or by civil disobedience, accepting one's unjust punishment as a means of demonstrating to others that a law is wrong. Certainly, saying, in effect as Perry does, that it's fine for some states to make marriage illegal for certain classes of people, or that some states can enslave women to fetuses, neither protects individual rights nor upholds rule by law (a necessary means of doing the former) at the federal level.

Insisting on a uniform application of a law, such as the tenth amendment, may well be what a principled man who supports properly limited government would do. However, it is clear to me that, whatever Rick Perry's motivations are for doing so, either they are not principled or if they are, the unspoken motivating principles are not ones I would agree with.

Sadly, Harrop doesn't mind this, being eager for the "our national politics" to get over the headache of, "a never-ending war between irreconcilable views" concerniing abortion. Is abortion murder or is forbidding it slavery? Harrop's "principled" stand is that this is no concern of our federal government.

Pragmatism is the rejection of principles on principle, and sidestepping life-and-death issues out of momentary convenience is an excellent example. I can't say the same for Perry (although his lip-service to the Constitution is probably expedient), but Froma Harrop shows her true pragmatic colors in this column. Conveniently, she feigns magnanimity and thoughtfulness by calling her opponent (and, by extension, herself) "principled."

-- CAV

P.S. Harrop's take on this is not the same as noticing that, as currently understood, states' rights accidentally protects the whole nation from being subjected to tyranny all at once.

Fools rush in ...

... where angels fear to tread.

Given China's good economic statistics (as reported, and when compared to the West) and its leaders' propensity of late to chastise our foolish economic policies, a short post about a visit to China by Niall Ferguson caught my eye:

... When the Western economies first tanked in 2008-09, China's communist rulers ordered the country's banks to lend, lend, lend. The biggest borrowers were property developers and local governments.

With inflation above 6 percent and the stock market down, the new Chinese middle class has gotten in on the act. An unknowable proportion of these new apartments have been bought as investments by people who already own one or more. With new-property prices up about 20 percent in just two years, who can blame them?

Sound familiar? Yes, this looks a lot like a real-estate bubble -- with Chinese characteristics. As for debt problems, Chinese bank loans were 97 percent of GDP in 2008. Now they're at 120 percent.

This certainly sounds like a real estate bubble to me. When it inevitably pops, there will be no shortage of people who will blame "capitalism" for China's problems. I plan to bring up this parallel whenever appropriate, and I hope pro-capitalist economic commentators do the same.

Government control or "encouragement" of economic activity is not capitalism.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Here's my favorite from a list of "10 Things I've Never Heard a Successful Startup Founder Say:" "Our most effective marketing campaigns were the ones filled with buzzwords and non-specific claims." [bold added]

The second link above presents the following example of something else I always notice when sleazy marketers try it: "When a company claims to be 'innovative and disruptive' but then pitches an idea you've heard ten times in the past month, it reminds us that if you have to say it, it's probably untrue."

I like this humorous take on reverse Turing tests: "Captchas to Keep Idiots out of Comment Threads."

Begala on Perry

Paul Begala writes a very interesting Daily Beast column against Texas Governor Rick Perry, who announced his 2012 candidacy for the Presidency this Saturday. Two things about the column should ring alarm bells for any reader who, like myself, is neither leftist nor conservative, but values the economic and personal freedom that only a government that protects individual rights can deliver: (1) Begala slams Perry, first and foremost, for being stupid. (2) At least one of the facts that Begala brings up is reason enough to oppose Perry even if he runs against Obama. Both underscore my reasons for opposing Perry.

First of all, the stupidity. Within the self-contained, mutually-reinforcing cocoon of leftist culture, the implicit assumption is that the opinions conventional to that segment of society are what any moderately thoughtful adult would have. Conversely, the only reasonable explanation for deviance from that line (that they can think of) is either an inability or unwillingness to think about such positions. Since the left are so out-of-touch with what many Americans believe (but know that it often isn't what they believe), this dismissal/insult of an opponent ironically manifests, not as relief, but as fear. You can almost hear them wail that, "Those dumbasses in flyover country are going to elect him!" (In a sense, such fear is justified: If you've already written off persuading people of your position, because you assume that you can't reach them, of course a strong opponent will frighten you.)

When you see someone like Begala going for the jugular right off the bat, you know this is someone he senses could win an election. I am afraid the Begala is right in a very delimited sense: Not that I agree that most Americans are stupid, but Perry can strike enough right notes to win the election -- and the left is unable to offer a viable alternative, even (especially?) if Obama were to lose a primary challenge.

Second, within the mixture of positions Begala opposes/makes fun of (RE Social Security: Has this man ever heard of the Supreme Court making a mistake, or does he oppose the Court ever being able to overturn itself?), there are some very bad signs regarding Perry, especially the following:

... Perry gathers 30,000 people to a controversial Christian prayer rally. In Houston. In August. One veteran Texas politico told me, "The guy is Elmer Gantry. He could take over a conservative megachurch tomorrow and outpreach the pastor." [link added]

As a religious conservative offered, in "defense" of this gathering:

There is no way the event could be seen as nonpolitical, of course, since Perry is the Governor of the nation’s second largest state and an almost-certain presidential candidate.[bold added]

This is precisely why it was inappropriate for a sitting governor to hold such an event, and it should alarm anyone who wants to get the government out of our pocketbooks without exchanging that form of interference with having the government everywhere else in our lives. Indeed, I have noted that Perry has already moved Texas in this direction -- and by co-opting the apparatus of the nanny state everyone thinks he opposes. (Not that Begala really cares, but he mentions in passing that,"Under the supposedly antigovernment Perry, government jobs grew at twice the rate of private-sector jobs." [link in original])

Worse still, in that conservative's "defense" of Perry is the real reason people who value separation of church and state should fear potential Tea Party support for Perry: He probably does look like an earnest man, who sees a moral dimension to America's crisis. Although the Tea Party is a nonreligious movement, it remains largely philosophically unsophisticated, and many, rightly seeing the need for a moral stand against socialism (which is present in the works of Ayn Rand), may wrongly take Perry to be the man they are looking for. Unfortunately, not just any moral framework will do, as witness Perry's own record. But I leave it to others to flesh out the argument that religious morality is bad for America.

-- CAV

8-13-11 Hodgepodge

Getting There

Continuing a theme from yesterday, I'll note that Thrutch carries an announcement from The Undercurrent, which reads, in part:

In his lecture at this summer's Objectivist conference, Yaron Brook, President of the Ayn Rand Institute, reflected on the first 50 years of the Objectivist movement. During that session, Dr. Brook stated that if we are to succeed in changing the culture, "we need more than an Institute: we need a movement."

We at The Undercurrent wholeheartedly agree, and we think a key part of the Objectivist movement needs to be a student movement. For the upcoming academic year, we're planning a number of programs designed to spark an Objectivist student movement on college campuses. To make these programs possible, we're asking for your support.

Read the whole thing.

The Landlord-in-Chief

After inflating housing prices on the way to wreaking havoc with the economy, our government has learned from its mistake and vowed never again to interfere with pricing mechanisms in the marketplace.

Just kidding. Our government has, instead, merely devised a new way of supporting housing prices:

The Obama administration may turn thousands of government-owned foreclosures into rental properties to help boost falling home prices.

This will appear to be good news to current homeowners and potential sellers, but it will be bad news for potential homeowners looking for bargains. On the bright side, Obama will fail to succeed in even looking like he is everyone's savior.

Weekend Reading

"Why not dump your entire stock portfolio and go out for ice cream? That's exactly the kind of all-or-none fallacy we buy into in the midst of a panic." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "First Rule in Panics: Don't Panic" at SmartMoney

"Our government can attempt to 'shoot the messenger' all it wants. But its current policy of spending more money than it has will eventually catch up with us all." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Don't Shoot the Downgrade Messenger" at PajamasMedia

"All the technology and potent raw materials in the world are worthless if oil producers are not free to develop and profit from oil." -- Alex Epstein, in "We're Running out of Freedom, Not Oil" at The Daily Caller

"Yes, we are subject to error, but the good thing about errors is that they're almost always correctable and we can live a better life by learning from them." -- Michael Hurd, in "Top Ten Mistakes We Make" at DrHurd.com

XKCD: How to Create a Good Password

Heh -- and yeah!

-- CAV

Steve Jobs

Regulars here will likely know that, although I own and enjoy an iPod (running on Rockbox, of course), I am no Apple fan-boy. That last doesn't mean I don't admire Steve Jobs, though. Lately, he has done more than almost anyone else, as measured by the value of his company, to expand what is available to consumers like myself in the computer and electronic device marketplaces.

I appreciate his work (and, more important, the basic way he interacts with others) even more after reading a comparison between Jobs and Barney Frank written by Brian Phillips:

Steve Jobs and Barney Frank represent two different views of America. Jobs does not acquire his customers by force, but by offering them something that they want or need. Those who do not want his products do not have to buy them. In contrast, Frank imposes his edicts by force. Those who believe that his "products" will cause them harm have no choice in the matter. Those who do not like what Jobs offers can simply refuse to buy his products. Those who do not like what Frank offers can go to jail.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could live in a world with many more people like Steve Jobs, and far fewer Barney Frank types? Phillips has some thoughts on how to get to that point, as well.

-- CAV

From Peril to Profit

Yesterday, I came across an example of creative problem solving that is as amusing as it is instructive.

In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was campaigning for his third term. Three million campaign posters were printed with his photo and about to be distributed, until it was discovered that the campaign didn't have the rights from the photographer to use the photo. The copyright laws of the day allowed for the photographer to claim as much as $1 per poster, which adds up to over $60 million in today's dollars. The campaign couldn't afford to pay the photographer, but also couldn't afford the time and money to reprint the posters.

Josh Linkner of ePrize frames the problem in terms of a multiple choice test, and along those lines says that, for the Roosevelt campaign, "The multiple choice options seemed bleak."

But Linkner's point is that, many times, those who succeed can find or devise a less-than-obvious answer, and choose that answer. (He calls this an "unconventional alternative.") This is exactly what the Roosevelt campaign did:

[A] brilliant campaign manager sent a telegram to the photographer that said, "We are considering using your photo in the campaign. How much do you offer to pay for the publicity?" The photographer ended up paying $300 for the exposure instead of bankrupting the Roosevelt campaign and perhaps costing him the presidency.

What I see the campaign manager as having done, at least in this example, is back away from the ugly dilemma created by the initial mistake enough to see the broader context, which is that copyright protects the ability of the creator of intellectual property to trade his work for profit. This broader context allowed the manager to see the opportunity to do exactly that -- rather than just the "choice" between breaking the law or throwing away money he was responsible for.

-- CAV

Nihilism Unleashed

Brendan O'Neill of The Australian writes a very perceptive piece about the senseless rioting that has swallowed up London, correctly noting the role of the welfare state in shaping the minds of the rioters:

What we have on the streets of London and elsewhere are welfare-state mobs. The youth who are shattering their own communities represent a generation that has been suckled by the state more than any generation before it. They live in urban territories where the sharp-elbowed intrusion of the welfare state during the past 30 years has pushed aside older ideals of self-reliance and community spirit. The march of the welfare state into every aspect of urban, less well-off people's existences, from their financial wellbeing to their child-rearing habits and even into their emotional lives, with the rise of therapeutic welfarism designed to ensure that the poor remain "mentally fit", has undermined individual resourcefulness and social bonding. The antisocial youthful rioters are the end-product of this antisocial system of state intervention.

Much later, O'Neill succinctly, if indelicately, characterizes the rioters as, "a generation happy to shit on its own doorstep," after "the tentacle-like spread of the welfare state into every area of people's lives has utterly zapped old social bonds." To the rioters' minds, why shouldn't they behave like this, when the adults will clean up after them, as they always have? And, what sorts of meaningful bonds can someone form, who knows how to want, but not how to value things, in the sense of having to work to obtain them? The agony of the store owner who loses everything in a fire set on a lark won't be real to such savages.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

For a really depressing example of bad premises driving out good, consider the following Alan Greenspan quote in light of what he knows, but has decided to ignore, about inflation (scroll down): "The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default."

The following good question comes from the end of a conservative commentator's analysis of the mentality of Paul Krugman and his leftist ilk: "How can they plume themselves on their 'scientific' thoughtfulness and rationality, when they haven't done the basic work of sitting down and figuring out how to make a convincing argument?"

Via Instapundit is an executive summary of the proximate cause of London's Welfare State Riots, given the irrationality of the rioters: "What’s the cause of the riot? I’m guessing lack of incoming fire."

Yeah. But so what?

Brett Stephens makes a common conservative argument uncommonly well over at the Wall Street Journal: that Barack Obama is hardly the sharpest knife in the drawer. Stephens may be right, but at the end of the day, the question he raises (as well as its answer) is something of a distraction from what we ought to be thinking about as the opportunity to replace him approaches.

Stephens opens by comparing the Obama Presidency to a plane crash:

The aircraft was large, modern and considered among the world's safest. But that night it was flying straight into a huge thunderstorm. Turbulence was extreme, and airspeed indicators may not have been functioning properly. Worse, the pilots were incompetent. As the plane threatened to stall they panicked by pointing the nose up, losing speed when they ought to have done the opposite. It was all over in minutes.

Was this the fate of Flight 447, the Air France jet that plunged mysteriously into the Atlantic a couple of years ago? Could be. What I'm talking about here is the Obama presidency.

Obama's far-left credentials, as well as the antipathy of the far left to American "hegemony" (i.e., success, viewed, revealingly, as inherently predatory) are well-known, so one could reasonably answer the charge that our pilot is incompetent with something like, "Well, if a crash is his objective, he's actually doing pretty well."

Stephens gives a nod to this interpretation when he notes that, "[C]onservatives often seem to think his blunders, foreign and domestic, are all part of a cunning scheme to turn the U.S. into a combination of Finland, Cuba and Saudi Arabia." But this way of looking at Obama ascribes too much power to historical personalities. Obama isn't involved in a cunning scheme at all: He's openly doing things whose end result will cause the country to become like Finland, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia. Obama can do so because many voters want him to do exactly those sorts of things, even though quite a few who back him would probably deny that these goals would cause such a result. Obama may well be inept, but given his agenda, whatever ineptitude he has might be something to celebrate.

Where I found myself no longer smiling as I read this piece was when Stephens offered the following evidence of Barack Obama's stupidity:

Then there's his habit of never trimming his sails, much less tacking to the prevailing wind. When Bill Clinton got hammered on health care, he reverted to centrist course and passed welfare reform. When it looked like the Iraq war was going to be lost, George Bush fired Don Rumsfeld and ordered the surge.

Mr. Obama, by contrast, appears to consider himself immune from error. Perhaps this explains why he has now doubled down on Heckuva Job Geithner. It also explains his insulting and politically inept habit of suggesting -- whether the issue is health care, or Arab-Israeli peace, or change we can believe in at some point in God's good time -- that the fault always lies in the failure of his audiences to listen attentively...

In the sense that our political system makes radical change very difficult to achieve, even a politician informed by individualist principles would find himself having to accept steps in the right direction in lieu of major reforms, so Stephens may have a point in suggesting that Obama change course.

However, the comparison to Clinton rings an alarm bell when we consider what Obama has succeeded in getting away with (that Clinton couldn't, because it was too soon), despite his ineptitude -- and how close to disaster this country is. In our political system, the President has a great deal of power, but Obama can't act alone. Furthermore, many of the foibles Stephens points out are shared by plenty of other politicians, and not just from Obama's party. Notably, consider the callous disregard for fiscal reality from both sides of the aisle during the "default" "debate."

After going through his evidence for Obama's stupidity, Stephens ends by citing Forrest Gump as a wise fool: "Stupid is as stupid does." Maybe so, but who needs real stupidity when considerations other than the proper purpose of government and, indeed, the very constraints of reality take precedence in the minds of people who, although they may not be stupid, might as well be as a result of those considerations.

Whether Stephens is right or wrong about Barack Obama's intellect, the altruistic, collectivistic philosophy he shares with most other politicians -- and too much of the electorate -- will render whatever brainpower he's got moot, at least in terms of protecting the individual rights and lives of Americans and, with them, the greatness of our country.

-- CAV

Purpose and Creativity

Musician John Mayer, addressing students at his alma mater, Boston's Berklee College of Music, urges the aspiring musicians to "manage the temptation to publish [themselves]," and uses his own experience with Twitter to make his point:

John Mayer's main reason for discouraging promotion came from his own struggle to curb using social media, which should have been an outlet for promotion but eventually became an outlet for artistic expression. Mayer shared that he found himself asking himself questions like "Is this a good blog? Is this a good tweet? Which used to be is this a good song title? Is this a good bridge?"

And possibly more alarming, Mayer realized that pouring creativity into smaller, less important, promotional outlets like twitter not only distracted him from focusing on more critical endeavors like his career, it also narrowed his mental capacity for music and writing intelligent songs. [minor format edits]

As Mayer himself puts it:

The tweets are getting shorter, but the songs are still 4 minutes long. You're coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes long... I realized about a year ago that I couldn't have a complete thought anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and I was always writing on it. And I stopped using twitter as an outlet and I started using twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn't write a song. [minor format edits, my emphasis]

I see some parallels with other creative efforts, including writing, although the parallels with writing are not exact for two reasons (with opposite implications): First, whereas writing is a mode of communication and music isn't, social media can supplement one's other writing, so social media can help a writer, such as by helping him find subject matter or hash out ideas. Second, since writing is a method of communication, it can suffer from additional limitations: If the goal is to convey new ideas to a wide audience, the fragmented, self-selecting nature of social media audiences (i.e., collections of followers), can lead to merely preaching to a choir, which will (1) do nothing to help an author figure out how to reach people who might be receptive to what he says, but do not necessarily agree with him, and (2) limit the potential audience to like-minded people.

The headline in Berklee Blogs, on Mayer's urging to manage self-promotion got closer to articulating Mayer's point better than the body of the article did later on, when it claimed that Mayer, "discourag[ed] [self-]promotion." It is clear from what Mayer says in the article that he doesn't discourage self-promotion across the board: If you don't advertise, you won't sell, no matter how good you are, so self-promotion is necessary. However, self-promotion requires a different-enough thought process that it can become a serious distraction if there is not a clear distinction in the mind of the artist (or other creative type) between self-promotional activity and the creative activity it is supposed to support.

Some time ago, I became aware of problems with my writing and had concluded that the habit of blogging probably had something to do with them, and began taking some steps in the direction of spending less time blogging. At the same time, blogging has also been helpful to me in many ways, so I find Mayer's comments helpful in pinpointing the problem: Blogging mixes the truly creative aspect of writing with the tasks and temptations of self-promotion.

-- CAV

8-6-11 Hodgepodge

There and Back Again

This isn't just the alternate title to The Hobbit; it's also my take on the intellectual journey of the man behind the Moslem "Punk" movement, which sounds more like wishful thinking from journalists than reality to me:

The original novel was written by Michael Muhammad Knight, a radical himself by most standards. At 17 he left home in upstate New York to study Islam in a madrasa in Pakistan. Fleeing an abusive father, among other things, he converted to Islam as an act of rebellion. But he soon found plenty to rebel against within Islam -- not least its attitudes towards women, gay people and alcohol.

"So I imagined this fantasy world where Islam didn't have an absolute definition, and you had the power to define it yourself," Knight says today, a PhD student in Islamic studies in New York. That world was an imaginary Muslim punk scene called Taqwacore where these questions could all be resolved – "taqwa" being an Arabic term for consciousness of the divine. It was an attempt to reconcile his own fraught identity.

From whence he came, where he went, and to where he returned can be gleaned from the story of John Walker Lindh, as told by Christian Beenfeldt some years ago. That said, Knight, unlike Bilbo Baggins, hasn't really traveled very far.

Weekend Reading

"Not only is the position size substantial -- Washington's original loans were generously swapped for lower-ranked stock -- but because any sale would be publicly reviewed, the market would unquestionably anticipate the disposal." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "When Will Uncle Sam Dump GM?" at SmartMoney

"What's required for prosperity isn't the right stimulus or budget, but philosophy: that of a free society based on capitalism, voluntary trade and individual rights. " -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "What Happens When Bad Ideas Fester" at SmartMoney

My Two Cents

The second Hoenig piece comprises brief commentary and a must-see pictorial of the destitution visible to a recent visitor to North Korea -- even though government minders restricted his access to the most prosperous areas.

Brian Phillips is Back!

The author of Live Oaks is back from writing a book, and is undertaking what I have called many times in the past, the "battle of imagination" at his new blog, Individual Rights and Government Wrongs. As he explains at Live Oaks:

Late last year I grew weary of writing about negative aspects of our culture. I decided that I would start writing about more positive topics. As I did research, I realized that I was uncovering information that was unknown to many people. I also realized that the information, if properly integrated, was perfect for a book.

... I soon realized that government without taxation was only a small part of a bigger issue--how a capitalist society functions.

My book explores this topic. I look at a multitude of topics--parks, mail, education, roads, sanitation, charity, and much more--and show how these services are provided by private companies and individuals, rather than government. I also examine the destructive consequences of government involvement in these areas. I present actual examples from history and the contemporary world.

A sample chapter of his book, which shares its title with the new blog, is available from the blog.

Astrophysics vs. Cancer

If this teaser doesn't get you to read the whole story, nothing will: "Heavy metals emit low-energy electrons when exposed to X-rays at specific energies, the researchers found. This raises the possibility that implants made of gold or platinum could allow doctors to destroy tumors with low-energy electrons, while exposing healthy tissue to far less radiation than is possible today, ..." (HT: John Cook)

-- CAV

Dismuke's 78 RPM Blog

Radio Dismuke now has a companion blog that subsumes the purpose of the web site's old "Hit of the Week" section (which will still be around as an archive). Radio Dismuke has been around for quite some time, but in case you haven't heard of it, it's an Internet radio station that focuses on music from 1925-1935:

Discover the exciting music from one of the most vibrant decades in popular culture and entertainment. From the boom times of the "Roaring '20s" to the hard times of the Great Depression...from frantic Charlestons danced to by a generation of flappers to sentimental ballads performed by the early crooners...from the hot jazz bands of the top Harlem nightclubs to the popular dance bands of the formative years of the swing and big band eras, the great music of the 1920s & 1930s lives on and is entertaining a new generation of enthusiastic listeners. Radio Dismuke features original recordings from the 1925 - 1935 decade and can be heard at no cost from anywhere in the world by anyone with an Internet connection and a sound card equipped computer.

The new blog format will save Dismuke time -- something I have gained a new appreciation for lately (blogging as I am right now with a baby sleeping in my lap) -- and the new format takes advantage of new ways to access and share the music that have emerged since the site went up in the 1990's.

Do stop by and take a look around. Whether you're already a regular there or are just curious, I think you'll find it worth your while.

-- CAV

Ouch!

Via RealClear Markets comes a short, amusing send-up of Paul Krugman, the Keynesian economics columnist for the New York Times. I particularly enjoyed this part of the set-up, in which Robert Higgs notes the irony of Krugman's dismissal of his arguments as relying on a "confidence fairy:"

The irony in this dismissal, as others, including my friend Donald Boudreaux, have already pointed out, is that Krugman's own vulgar Keynesianism relies on a much more ethereal explanatory force for its own account of macroeconomic fluctuations–namely, the so-called animal spirits. The master himself wrote in The General Theory: "Thus if the animal spirits are dimmed and the spontaneous optimism falters, leaving us to depend on nothing but a mathematical expectation, enterprise will fade and die. . . . [I]ndividual initiative will only be adequate when reasonable calculation is supplemented and supported by animal spirits. . . ." (p. 162). Because Keynes conceived of his "animal spirits" as "a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction" (p. 161), he of course had no way to explain their coming and going or to measure or evaluate them in any way. They are as surreal as a ghost -- when and why they come and go, no man knows or can know. Such is the force that drives the ups and downs of private investment in Keynesian economic theory, and such theory unfailingly drives Krugman's commentaries on the recession and on the possibility and effective means of recovery from it. [link omitted, minor format edits]

And do go on to read the punchline, in which Keynes's "animal spirits" are revealed to be, if anything, a reflection of the assessments of people in the marketplace of the general hospitality of the political and economic situation to the conduct of their affairs. (Higgs notes that Keynes does not sufficiently acknowledge a rational basis for these evaluations.) Thus Krugman not only advocates a discredited theory, he does so ignorantly of the theory itself.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

Caught on the nanny (state) cam: The Feds have conducted an armed raid of a health food store for selling raw milk. I don't advocate the consumption of unpasteurized dairy products, but it is not the proper function of the government to dictate how people feed and care for themselves any more than it is to make people pay for the same.

The problem, being cultural, was inevitable, but an interesting item I learned from a recent Christopher Hitchens piece is that joining the EU hastened the Islamization of Turkey by subordinating its military to civilian control. This is yet another example of how merely imitating the institutional arrangements of a Western-style republic is not enough to protect individual rights.

James Taylor of the Heartland Institute argues that new NASA data "blows a hole" in AGW "alarmism." This may well harm the case for AGW, but it is in the nature of the alarmist to ignore or explain away data that indicate that there is no cause for alarm. This is part of why I regard it as a waste of time, past a certain point, to argue against global warming (assuming that it isn't happening) without also at least bringing up the idea that it would be improper for the government to do anything even if global warming were occurring. [Update: A reader emails me with a piece that is far less enthusiastic about the paper discussed by Taylor. It starts off with this: "The hype surrounding a new paper by Roy Spencer and Danny Braswell is impressive (see for instance Fox News); unfortunately the paper itself is not."]

Updates

Today: Added update to last section on AGW.

Clueless, at Best

A bill has gotten through committee in Congress that effectively assumes that we're all child pornographers, and threatens to subject anyone at any time to unreasonable searches of their Internet activity. Worse still, as Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic points out, there is, as yet, little opposition to the bill from any quarter.

Perhaps, in an age in which numerous people are reveling in the selective openness made possible (and, often, advantageous) by new technology, too many of us are forgetting that a complete, government-enforced "openness" would actually be far from exhilarating.

Nor do police need probable cause to search this information. As Rep. James Sensenbrenner says, (R-Wisc.) "It poses numerous risks that well outweigh any benefits, and I'm not convinced it will contribute in a significant way to protecting children."

Among those risks: blackmail.

In Communist countries, where the ruling class routinely dug up embarrassing information on citizens as a bulwark against dissent, the secret police never dreamed of an information trove as perfect for targeting innocent people as a full Internet history. Phrases I've Googled in the course of researching this item include "moral panic about child pornography" and "blackmailing enemies with Internet history." For most people, it's easy enough to recall terms you've searched that could be taken out of context, and of course there are lots of Americans who do things online that are perfectly legal, but would be embarrassing if made public even with context: medical problems and adult pornography are only the beginning. How clueless do you have to be to mandate the creation of a huge database that includes that sort of information, especially in the age of Anonymous and Wikileaks? How naive do you have to be to give government unfettered access to it? Have the bill's 25 cosponsors never heard of J. Edgar Hoover? [link dropped, emphasis added]

Friedersdorf is right to liken this bill to the Mann Act, which also created a new way to extort people. With new protection schemes already taking advantage of new social media, the last thing we need is the government joining the fun, or lending a helping hand to the meddlesome or the criminally-inclined.

Whatever benefits accrue to openness lie in the ability of the person disclosing private information to present that information with the relevant context, rather than having something cherry-picked from their activities, and presented as "fact" in a context insinuating something that is untrue. While there will always be people who attempt to do this, the legislation pending before Congress will greatly empower such people.

Anyone who imagines that this legislation is harmless because they "have nothing to hide" are mistaken at best. The difference between this bill's consequences and the Internet as it is now, is similar to that between disrobing at a nude beach on a warm summer day -- and, say, being groped by TSA agents for the rest of our lives.

-- CAV

Cali's Triple Whammy

Nicole Gelinas, appearing in the Los Angeles Times, advocates a free market fix for California's ridiculous housing prices. I agree with her that the free market needs to be allowed to work, but dislike her formulation of this solution as "forcing lenders to accept responsibility for their bad lending practice," for two reasons: First, it lets the government off the hook for its role, blatant from the rest of the piece, in encouraging these very bad practices. Second, the whole problem with our economy is the wide acceptance of the idea that the government should be issuing economic marching orders to private citizens. If you flush your own money down the toilet, and the government doesn't offer you relief, it isn't forcing you to do anything.

While I'm offering criticisms of a still-worthwhile piece, I think its scope necessarily creates an incomplete picture. Another major source of California's affordable housing woes is government meddling with the use of private property, as Thomas Sowell, among others, has indicated. So, while Gelinas's recommendation is in the right direction, it needs to include more than just the banking sector.

With that out of the way, Gelinas presents some sobering numbers about the poor fiscal shape California is in. Notably, just as taxation and inflation fail to account for all the costs of the government, so do deficit numbers fail to adequately capture just how badly in debt the citizens of that state are, due to government interference in the economy. Measuring debt alone, we could say that things are actually at least three times as bad as the figure for the state government's debt would have us believe.

To put the numbers in perspective: $200 billion [of dead-weight housing debt] is more than twice the $79 billion in general obligation bond debt that Californians owe. State bonds, though, generally pay for something useful, like road repairs. Dead mortgage debt doesn't pay for anything but a forehead-slapping "what were we thinking?"

It would cost California's underwater homeowners more than $12 billion annually over 30 years to pay off this debt, even at today's super-low interest rates. That's money that people can't save for retirement or their kids' education, or can't put into businesses to create jobs.

Think about this for a moment: Just as the social "safety" net is unraveling, people already unaccustomed to planning for things like retirement are hamstrung due to the consequences of other government actions! (And we haven't even considered what inflation can do to compound these difficulties.)

The rest of the article goes on to discuss the futility of the various government mitigation measures so far, and the folly of continuing them.

-- CAV

Work with Me

Standing in a line during an errand over the weekend, I came across a blog post featuring a bullet list titled, "How to Work with Me," that the blog author received in preparation for working with a bigwig who, in the blogger's words, "doesn't have time for bullshit."

I wouldn't exactly call the list items principles, but they are close to being that useful. The items are too tailored to said bigwig's temperament, personal style, and workday milieu to be principles, but I would say that the principles behind the advice are so close to the surface that almost anyone could glean some useful ideas about how to make working on a team a more productive experience.

You will find items that strike a nerve, perhaps because you've always wanted to complain or do something about someone else's miscommunication or poor use of your time; and you will find items that leave you thinking something like, "Huh. I've never considered that before," or, "I think I'll start being clear about that issue myself, from now on."

Here are a few of the items:

10. Be consistent in your communication. Use words consistently. Use email headers consistently. Strive to make your work immediately comprehensible.

11. If you disagree with me, voice your differences. I welcome and invite dissent. If this makes you uncomfortable, feel free to prepare your thoughts after the meeting and then later return to make your case.

12. Ego-driven debates annoy me. Check your ego at the door: I'm only interested in reaching the best, most elegant solution -- I don't care if it's your idea or mine.

13. Don't be afraid to ask questions if you're not clear. I have more patience for explaining and clarifying my position before you start than I do patience for fixing a wasteful, incorrect approach after the fact.

Whoever this is, I also particularly like his approach to meetings, which I recognize as necessary, but usually hate because so many of them waste so much time.

The work you trade with others brings you more profit the more effective its product is for your customer and the more efficiently you deliver it. Both sources of profit depend on clear communication and good use of time. This executive clearly understands this and is nipping several common problems related to communication and time in the bud.

-- CAV

--- In Other News ---

I agree that it was time for a coaching change for the U.S. Men's national soccer team, but am not as sanguine as many seem to be about the choice of Juergen Klinsmann for the role. George Vecsey of the New York Times raises two big concerns: How is the man as a tactician, and does he really understand the psyche of the American player?

I can feel the annoyance of the school marm who got kicked out of Starbucks after not using its silly vernacular -- memorably dubbed "Starbucks Esperanto" by Joe Queenan. However, I found her confrontational attitude silly and unproductive. The proper response to being told, "You're not going to get anything unless you say butter or cheese," isn't to call the barista an "asshole" and give him a reason to call the cops. It's to say -- if you really are that annoyed -- "I'll get a plain bagel now, or your complaint department and all my friends are going to hear about how Starbucks made me stand in line for nothing."

I'm not sure I'd agree with the author's "evolutionary explanation" for procrastination. (Sure, one will be reluctant to implement a plan he doesn't trust. One can reach this conclusion through introspection, minus any comprehensive theory of psychology. This conclusion thus neither depends on EP nor lends credence to it.) Nevertheless, I think the following idea of his has merit:

[O]ne of the most effective ways to sidestep procrastination is to find the story of someone who personifies what you want to accomplish, figure out how they accomplished what they did, then base your process on their approach. [my emphasis]

One reason for procrastination is that one has no idea how to accomplish a goal -- or, perhaps (as in the case of "have a successful career") hasn't really set a definite goal. Looking at a successful model can at least provide a framework for clarifying one's objectives or finding a path towards achieving them.