Both Hands Are Filthy

Bethany McLean of Slate relates a story about the government's role in the fiscal crisis that she likens to "the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing." It will not, however, surprise anyone who, as I do, views government regulation of the economy as both immoral and impractical.

On March 16 the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, sued three former top executives of Washington Mutual, or WaMu, for taking "extreme and historically unprecedented risks," thereby causing the bank to lose "billions of dollars." That same day, the New York Times reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission had sent so-called Wells notices—often a sign that civil charges are imminent -- to a handful of former executives at mortgage-securitization giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

... The FDIC is seeking to recover $900 million from the three bankers. Fannie and Freddie were taken over by the government in the fall of 2008. So far, they have cost taxpayers about $130 billion.

Perhaps you're thinking: If only the government had known at the time what these scoundrels were up to, we could all have been spared a great deal of pain. The trouble with that line of reasoning is that, um, the government did know what was going on. The Office of Thrift Supervision, which regulated WaMu, and the Office of Housing Enterprise Oversight, which regulated Fannie and Freddie, were supervising the very behavior that their sister agencies are now suing over. The government's lawsuits call to mind a cynical boast by Burt Lancaster, playing tabloid power broker J.J. Hunsecker, in the 1957 noir classic Sweet Smell of Success: "My right hand hasn't seen my left hand in 30 years." [format edits, emphasis added]

Absent the full context of the government's systemic role in causing the financial crisis, this story merely lends false credibility to the notion that our government was merely inefficient or inept. A good place to start really understanding the significance of this particular instance of bad government would be to ask: When the government encourages and facilitates lying, cheating, and stealing economy-wide, what will more efficiency on its part actually do for us?

-- CAV

----- In Other News -----

Huh! LB's daughter has synesthesia. I personally know three synesthetes. One of them has a form of time-space synesthesia.

According to Wal-Mart's CEO, sharp inflation is around the corner.

If my own blog-following habits are any indication, most people who follow this blog do so through feed readers. If this describes you, and you're curious about my take on an issue, you won't necessarily know that I accept questions through Formspring. Visit this blog any time or go here, where there is a submission slot and a list of links to all my past answers. You get extra points for prefacing your question with, "Dear Uncle Gus," and signing off with something clever.

I finally got around to upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04. (I think support for 9.x ends after April.) If you want your window minimize-maximize-close thingies to appear on the upper right (the old default) rather than the upper left (the new default), How-to Geek has you covered.

Updates

4-4-11: Added hypertext anchor.

Cultural Change: An Example

Something I frequently mention here is the need for fundamental cultural change to occur before any number of disastrous political trends can be halted or reversed. Whenever I mention this need, I typically also mention that the way to achieve such fundamental change is through something I call "cultural activism." To borrow a definition from a page about cultural activism at the web site of the Ayn Rand Institute:

Cultural Activism means actively promoting rational ideas throughout the culture, from education to science, from the art world to the media to public policy, all for the purpose of bringing about a cultural renaissance.

That's a huge and multifaceted goal. On top of that, many don't really appreciate the need to change people's minds before they will change the way they act (including which candidates or causes they will support). Setting aside that problem for a moment, there is a further difficulty: It can still be difficult for those who do appreciate this need to learn or devise ways to help it along, or to imagine that such sweeping changes can occur at all, much less make demonstrable progress over one's lifetime.

Fortunately, history can provide us with inspiring and instructive examples. I have mentioned the abolition of slavery in the United States before. On a much smaller scale, there is also the story about the end of commercial segregation in Houston, Texas. I ran into another such story yesterday, right out of my childhood back yard, and over a period of time about a decade longer than I have been alive.

The publicity surrounding the likely entry of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour -- whom I am unlikely to support -- into the 2012 Republican presidential field has cast some indirect light on yet another example of big cultural change happening over a short period of time. Regarding Barbour's candidacy, I noted the other day that more media attention will be devoted to racial issues than to Barbour's merits as a candidate. That has, so far and to the extent I can gauge, unfortunately proved to be the case.

There has been a silver lining, however: Some positive stories, about how much things have changed in his state over the past half-century, are starting to come out. I'll excerpt from one such story, by Robert S. McElvaine, a historian from Jackson's Millsaps College:

Fifty years ago today, white Mississippi staged an extravaganza, billed as the "Secession Day Centennial." Gov. Ross Barnett, decked out in a Confederate general's uniform, led the parade, followed by thousands of men, marching or riding horses, all wearing Confederate gray uniforms. (Gray still seems an odd color choice for people adamantly opposed to the mixing of black and white.) Also on parade were marching bands, majorettes and women in antebellum dresses sipping mint juleps. Tens of thousands looked on, many giving the Rebel yell.

It was described as the biggest celebration in Mississippi's history -- and the grandest of the events across the South to mark the anniversary of the dissolution of the Union.

Virtually all Mississippi's political leaders took part. The world's largest Confederate battle flag, which stretched across Capitol Street, was the principal object of veneration. Thousands of people watched an outdoor re-enactment of the secession convention. Four grand balls were held that night to honor the state's decision to secede.

...

It is time to ask, 150 years after the Civil War and 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement, how much Mississippi has changed. Attitudes toward secession and the war can provide a rough gauge.

A comparison of the centennial celebration of the state's secession in 1961 with this year's marking of the sesquicentennial is telling.

"Here in Mississippi," the Biloxi Sun-Herald noted, "observances of milestones in Confederate history -- if any have taken place -- have escaped public notice."

...

The evidence that Mississippi has changed greatly over the past half-century is clear. The state House of Representatives passed is a bill designating the last Monday in April as "Civil Rights Memorial Day."

And, finally, there is this: The large commemorative event planned in Mississippi this year is not for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War -- but for the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides. [minor format edits]

While there are, as the article indicates, certainly still racists in Mississippi, it is heartening to step back and consider this rapid and profound change. I would not say that racism is dead as a cultural force there, but, judging from such evidence, it appears to be dying out. That is real progress.

Times are tough and are probably going to get a lot tougher before they get better. Our nation is on the cusp of an existential crisis. But great improvements to the culture can take place over a few decades, and that fact gives us hope.

-- CAV

Snark vs. Values

Over at Salon, Lauren Frey Daisley relates how a personal experiment went for her in "My Month of No Snark." She decided to see whether being nicer to people would improve her mood generally, so she lived by the following rules for a month:

I cannot say or write anything that could be construed as not nice. [She later acknowledges that, "When it concerns real human strife, it's ultimately not nice to just be polite." --ed]

I do not have to school other people on being kind.

I am allowed to tease in a good-natured way.

Her results surprised her and are interesting to consider:

... Without the ability to vent, I had only two options: to let something relatively stupid eat away at me -- or to just let it go. So I tried that. What did it matter if a stranger thought my marriage was challenged because of my first name? Giving his weird, offhand theory any stock would be as productive as stepping on a crack in the sidewalk and worrying it would hurt my mom. So I decided there was something to the old preteen-teen mantra: Whatever.

...

Instead of me denying my true thoughts, I stopped giving the unproductive ones much weight. Adding credence to the theory that changing what you do changes how you think, unkind thoughts just dissipated in a matter of days...

I don't think it's accurate to say, "What you do changes how you think," but I think Daisley has shown us something with her experiment, and the key to seeing exactly what this is is to consider a point she raises in passing and a realization that came to her at the end of her experiment. First, the point:

Maybe I've had too many years of therapy, or maybe we've all had too many years of Oprah and the imperative to "get it all out."

And now, the realization:

One thing that hadn't occurred to me: Buddy didn't mean anything at all by what he said. It was a harmless attempt at conversation, maybe even a touching way of reaching out. Either way, why waste energy assuming ill intent? Haven't we all said something stupid and realized it sounded insulting? If we stop lashing out against perceived insults and stop subtly eroding our friendships -- or even kind relations with strangers -- by giving so much attention to the things that bug us, quality of life inches incrementally but noticeably closer to excellent.

In other words, Daisley's snarkiness was a manifestation of a mental habit she had fallen into -- of indulging in her immediate emotional reaction to the people around her and simply spewing out whatever came to her mind without introspection. I am sure that even the basic question, "Is this really worth my attention?" was left unasked.

Daisley's article shows the value, in terms of improving one's emotional state, one's ability to evaluate others, and the quality of one's relationships, of not just immediately venting negative emotions. Absent her usual outlet, she instead confronted what it was about so many little things that used to bug her and, in the process, discovered that most of them weren't worth her time.

To the extent that her actions changed how she thought, I think it was because her actions both mimicked what a more deliberate person might have done, and caused her to start doing some of these things absent her usual alternative. She thus started enjoying some of the benefits of acting more deliberately. Perhaps the key to getting the most out of trying on such aphoristic advice as, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," is to conceptualize what putting it into practice accomplishes.

-- CAV

----- In Other News -----

I like the fact that there's an ad campaign, "in which inspiring poems (or parts thereof) are read by famous people for the Union Bank of Switzerland under the unifying title: Thoughts that Transcend Time."

One point Paul Graham made in the essay I linked to yesterday was, "I think the way to 'solve' the problem of procrastination is to let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you." Motivationally, yes. A to-do list will get you only so far. To-do lists have their place, but they have to be prepared correctly to really be effective.

I enjoyed this quote about formal and informal levels of usage from the preface of my Paper Tiger version of Norman Foerster and J. M. Steadman's Writing and Thinking: "Or, to use the words of Professor Harold W. Bentley, the authors have tried not to let the 'virtue of tolerance' be carried 'so far that it leads to the vice of slovenliness.'" (For those who might be interested in the book, the Paper Tiger site hosts a review by Jean Moroney.)

Good Procrastination and Bad Thinking?

I came across a couple of very interesting takes on a couple of subjects generally regarded as bad and good, respectively: procrastination and thinking.

The first such article is one that discusses "good procrastination," written several years ago by Paul Graham.

There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, I'd argue, is good procrastination.

...

[T]he most impressive people I know are all procrastinators. ... They're type-C procrastinators: they put off working on small stuff to work on big stuff.

...

The mildest seeming people, if they want to do real work, all have a certain degree of ruthlessness when it comes to avoiding [small stuff].

Graham has much more to say about procrastination, so I recommend reading the whole thing. More interesting to me is why this point struck me as unusual: The term "procrastination" actually covers lots of territory, and yet most people are really thinking only of the bad kinds of procrastination when they evaluate it.

Switching over from good procrastination to bad thinking, I found many interesting points in Scott Berkun's, "Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas." While I don't agree with everything he says there, I think his broad points are in the right direction. I'll list them here by heading in bold, followed by a quote on each point:

• [Past Practice and S]uccess at Defending Bad Ideas -- If the people you're arguing with aren't as comfortable in the tactics of argument, or aren't as arrogant as you are, they may even give in and agree with you.
• Death [of Rigorous Checking] by [Group] Homogeny -- [T]he more homogeneous a group of people are in their thinking, the narrower the range of ideas that the group will openly consider.
• Thinking at the Wrong Level -- "Um, hey. The hole you're digging is very nice, and it is the right size. But you're in the wrong yard."
  
• Killed in the Long Term by Short Term Thinking -- [S]hort term bits of data are neither reliable nor a wise way to go about making important long term decisions.

Berkun ends with defusing tactics for those confronted by a Smart Person advocating a Bad Idea. Essentially, this boils down to asserting one's right to make a deliberate decision with all the facts at his disposal, and any advice one needs. He closes with a nice-looking list of references.

This piece shows up on the sidebar of Berkun's blog as one of his most popular posts, and I think its popularity is justified. It offers both (1) worthwhile advice for anyone who wants to improve his thinking in group settings by becoming aware of how he might inadvertently be depriving himself of constructive criticism, as well as (2) a sort of self-defense primer for anyone who finds himself confronted, say, at work by a bunch of people getting ready to act on a Bad Idea.

-- CAV

----- In Other News -----

En route to adjusting a new water heater so I could enjoy hot showers, I uncovered this helpful hint and thought I'd pass it on.

While you see the EPA recommending that water heaters be set at 120 degrees F to save energy, OSHA recommends a tank temperature of 140 degrees F. This is because at lower temperatures, your water heater can become an incubator for the Legionella bacteria, the cause of Legionnaire's disease. With the ideal growth range being 95 to 115 degrees F, you can see how that would be so. [minor edits]

I guess it ain't easy -- or healthy -- being green:

"The phrase 'I don't have time for' should never be said." -- Scott Berkun. I disagree. This can be a polite way to avoid saying, "I have a higher priority than that," or, "How I spend my time is none of your damned business." But you should know for yourself -- in terms of your own priorities -- why you're playing close to the vest. Scott Berkun does make several useful points at the above link.

Long-Neglected Experiment Gives New Clues to Origin of Life: "A classic experiment that has sat on the shelf for more than a half-century is yielding new clues about how life may have arisen on Earth, according to a team of scientists that has gone back and analyzed the data with modern techniques."

3-26-11 Hodgepodge

This Evening: Human Achievement Hour

From Voices for Reason:

The event coincides with "Earth Hour," which encourages people worldwide to turn off their lights as a protest against carbon emissions. During "Human Achievement Hour," we encourage you to leave your lights on and fully enjoy the benefits of industrial civilization made possible by burning fossil fuels. Beginning at 8 p.m. EST, CEI is hosting a celebration at its offices in Washington D.C. and via livestream.

I still prefer, "Edison Hour," and if I lived in New Jersey, I'd consider a pilgrimage to the Thomas Edison National Historical Park.

A PhD Bubble

I haven't read it all yet, but I have already seen several important issues raised in an Economist article about "disposable academics."

These armies of low-paid PhD researchers and postdocs boost universities', and therefore countries', research capacity. Yet that is not always a good thing. Brilliant, well-trained minds can go to waste when fashions change. The post-Sputnik era drove the rapid growth in PhD physicists that came to an abrupt halt as the Vietnam war drained the science budget. Brian Schwartz, a professor of physics at the City University of New York, says that in the 1970s as many as 5,000 physicists had to find jobs in other areas.

Supply and demand is hurting the academics themselves, and massive government mis-allocation of resources towards specific programs of research and education is wasting talent and effort on a colossal scale.

Weekend Reading

"This is not 'humanitarian' or moral in the least; it's an evil act, resting on an evil premise (that sacrifice is 'noble') and an obscene abuse of American lives and liberties, with not a single selfish gain to be had in return." -- Richard Salsman , in "Libya Exposes Obama As Our Latest Neocon President" at Forbes

"[I]t's the market that should serve as your guide, not our friends or what we see on the news." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "A Second Date With the Rupee" at Smart Money

"Think of the smoker who quits because he's fed up. It's the same with anything else in life." -- Michael Hurd, in "Change Because You Want To" at DrHurd.com

"Obamacare will waste our money, but that cost is insignificant compared to our wasted freedom, wasted medicine and wasted lives." -- Richard Ralston, in "Waste Abounds with ObamaCare" at The Orange County Register

My Two Cents

Michael Hurd's excellent column about how people change reminds me of a story I heard long ago about my maternal grandfather. He had been a smoker for a long time, but one day got sick of it and simply tossed his cigarettes out the window of his truck. That was that. Grandpa lived into his nineties.

I always remember that story when I hear about people having trouble making a major, positive change, but it was only after I read that column that I really understood why some people struggle with such things and others have no trouble at all. Hurd also has useful advice on how to properly communicate with a loved one who needs to make a change.

"Social" Networking and Isolation

This atheist obviously does not regard church as the answer, but I do think this article is on to something in terms of both recognizing a potential problem and combating it. (HT: Found on the Web)

Facebook is all about making life seem joyful -- we "like" one another's happy status updates, not the sad ones; we post photos of our parties, not our funerals; we use it to celebrate births and marriages and new relationships, not to mourn deaths or remember break-ups. Facebook is meant to be a happy place for happy people. But it doesn't seem to work out so well. We all think everyone else is happy, but we don't feel the joy.

Part of avoiding such a pitfall is to step back from time to time and realize that everyone else has problems, too. In addition -- and I will agree this far with the article -- part of avoiding such a pitfall is to make sure you unplug (a lot more than) once in a while.

-- CAV

Calagione on Beer

Sam Calagione is the founder and brewmaster of one of my favorite breweries, Delaware-based Dogfish Head. I ran into a nice interview with him over at the Atlantic the other day, and enjoyed seeing the snapshot it provided of a man who loves what he does.

What do you say when people ask, "What do you do?"

I'm very proud to say or write on any vocational inquiry document that I am a brewer. My title is "president and founder" but I am a brewer first and a businessman second, and I think Dogfish's commitment to making a wide array of quality off-centered ales brings me more pride then growing from the smallest brewery in the country to where we are today.

He also offers some thoughts worth pondering by beer aficionados:

What's an emerging trend that you think will shake up the beer world?

Glassware and temperature. The majority of what we think we are tasting we are actually smelling, so a balloon-shaped glass, whether it's a sniffer or red wine glass, is best for almost all beers, as it captures more of the aromatics. With temperature, the perception as dictated by the largest breweries is that beer is best served ice-cold. But of course anything you drink ice-cold is going to numb and retard your taste buds and nothing is good about that if you care about enjoying what you are ingesting.

A couple of weeks ago, we hosted one of my brothers and his family for a short visit to Boston. On the last day, my brother and I visited the Sam Adams brewery, making a stop afterwards at Doyle's, the first pub to serve Sam Adams. There, we imbibed from a new type of drinking glass developed by the brewery. (It's pictured at right. (Go here for more detail.) People who had been on the tour got to keep the glasses, and I think they do enhance the taste of the beer. I now usually drink from one of these at the end of the day.

I'll end this post with four beer recommendations. The first and the last I have known about for years. The middle two I purchased since moving to Boston, each time because the name made me laugh and become curious. The name of each is linked to its brewer's product description, and the short blurb is linked to the review page at Beer Advocate.

• 90 Minute IPA -- an imperial IPA by Dogfish Head
• Blithering Idiot -- a barley wine by Weyerbacher
• Ten Fidy -- a Russian imperial stout by Oscar Blues
• Session -- a lager by Full Sail

The Beer Advocate reviewers are hard on Blithering Idiot and Session. In the former case, this is something that I suspect could be partly due to spoilage of some shipments. In the latter, the low ratings may reflect a common (but mistaken) prejudice by "beer snobs" against lagers as such. I like all four of these very different beers. As Calagione puts it in his interview, the idea that "that session beers and extreme beers cannot peacefully coexist on the same shelf" deserves to be forgotten.

-- CAV

Two Views on Haley Barbour

Over at Forbes is a look at why Mississippi governor Haley Barbour is likely the strongest Republican candidate -- in terms of electability, at least -- two years out from the 2012 election. The last reason stated by Rich Karlgaard sounds the most compelling to me.

He is the only Republican candidate who talks about economic growth as Ronald Reagan would have. When Romney talks about growth, it is in the white-paper language of the Boston private equity swell he used to be. Daniels and Christie have lashed themselves to trimmed budgets, and that’s mostly what they talk about, especially Christie. Fine as it goes -- essential, even – but we don’t hear enough growth talk from either Daniels or Christie.

While the Obama Presidency has been a gift to many non-left critics of Bush, for making so many issues so clear (See the rise of the Tea Party movement.), it may come with a downside: In the 2012 election, anyone who can convincingly sound like he is pro-growth and pro-defense (like Ronald Reagan), regardless of whether his political philosophy really is what is best for America (again, like Ronald Reagan), has a decent shot at being nominated by the GOP and, if so, a good one of defeating Barack Obama.

Haley Barbour is a skilled politician with a common touch that can play well in the "red states." His manner will charm many in those states, while easily enraging knee-jerk leftists, who will (and already are) taking the bait.

If you Google "Haley Barbour" today, though, [March 15, 2011 --ed] the top item is not his thoughts on the economy or his achievements in Mississippi, which he touted, but ... you guessed it:

"Barbour aide loses job over earthquake jokes." This, followed by his previous negative press report: "Barbour's Account Of Civil Rights Era In Mississippi ..." that, shall we say, was a bit more flattering about the white Citizens Council than history would portray (and Barbour was quick to clarify in renouncing).

Barbour will, to an even greater extent than George W. Bush ever was, be "misunderestimated," as the former President used to put it. That is, while there are plenty of legitimate reasons to oppose Barbour, he will be attacked as an ignorant, racist hick instead. (Of course, if Barbour is a racist, he deserves no support and should be attacked for it. That said, as far as I know, he definitely has a tin ear about race, but is not actually a racist.)

Yes, a Barbour misstep could help such an attack along, sinking his candidacy, but this line of attack might backfire, too -- by making him able to portray his opponents as unserious, and possibly even giving him the opportunity to make them look ridiculous. In addition, this could set the bar so low in the blue states that many voters there will be relieved when they see that he's really, "not that bad."

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, definitely succumbs to the temptation of "misunderestimating" Barbour. (And he shows a blue-state-ish tone deafness for national politics when he paints conservative voters in the south and midwest with the same tar-laden brush he uses on Barbour.) Nevertheless, Marshall does bring up a serious possible weakness that may well bother conservative voters: his long history as a lobbyist.

That last, as well as the related matter of any meddling with the private economy he has done as governor of Mississippi, is, I submit, the vein to mine regarding Barbour. I do not know enough about Barbour's political philosophy to state definitively my opinion of him, but my initial impression is that he is a run-of-the-mill, pragmatic (i.e., unprincipled) big-government conservative. Whether that impression is correct is the key to deciding whether to support him at all (and, if so, under what circumstances, and with what caveats), or oppose him (and, if so, how best to do so).

-- CAV

PS: Upon re-reading this, I am less persuaded by the Karlgaard piece. The Tea Party, if it strongly-enough demands a promise to move towards limited government, could well be a factor in making Barbour less viable than he might otherwise be. Certainly, it forms a ready audience for anyone who finds that Barbour is not the kind of pro-freedom candidate America needs.

America's "Strategic Dementia"

Caroline Glick's column about America's latest round of blunders in the Middle East demands a full read, and lives up to her apt description (in quotes, above) of our strategic posture. Most notably, Glick names the following essential problem our foreign policy:

Under the Obama administration, these competing interests have not merely influenced US policy in the Middle East. They have dominated it. Core American interests have been thrown to the wayside. [emphasis added]

This is not to say that Glick grasps the full philosophical implications of that statement, which Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Institute indicates in a Voices for Reason post on Libya:

When our interests are at stake -- as they were and are in Iran -- we hold back and appease. When someone else's interests appear to be on the line (the rebels and civilians in Libya), we dutifully scramble jet-fighters and put American lives in harm's way, for the sake of serving others. Why? That double standard is rooted in the prevalent, and perverse, moral view that permeates our foreign policy -- a view requiring that we put the needs of others ahead of our own goals and interests. Acting in accordance with that view -- as I argue in my book -- has been enormously destructive to American security and freedom, across decades.

Nevertheless, Glick's column, especially with a such a proper understanding in mind, indicates that the problem with American foreign policy in the Middle East is philosophical in nature, and that none of its major undercurrents backs a truly self-interested foreign policy because they all operate on an altruistic premise:

The first side in the debate is the anti-imperialist camp, represented by President Barack Obama himself. Since taking office, Obama has made clear that he views the US as an imperialist power on the world stage. As a result, the overarching goal of Obama's foreign policy has been to end US global hegemony.

...

Like Obama, the neoconservatives are not motivated to act by concern for the US's core regional interests. What motivates them is their belief that the US must always oppose tyranny.

...

To an even greater degree than in Egypt, the debate [over what to do about Libya] was settled by the third US foreign policy camp - the opportunists. Led today by Clinton, the opportunist camp supports whoever they believe is going to make them most popular with the media and Europe.

After reiterating that, "how events impact core US regional interests is completely absent from the discussion," Glick paints a dire picture of the consequences for America of not thinking about her interests, and therefore not standing up for herself:

[B]y managing the Suez Canal in conformance with international maritime law, Egypt facilitated the smooth transport of petroleum products to global markets and prevented Iran from operating in the Mediterranean Sea.

...

In anticipation of the Brotherhood's rise to power, the military has begun realigning Egypt into the Iranian camp. This realignment is seen most openly in Egypt's new support for Hamas. Mubarak opposed Hamas because it is part of the Brotherhood.

The junta supports it for the same reason. Newly appointed Foreign Minister Nabil el-Araby has already called for the opening of Egypt's border with [Hamas-ruled] Gaza.

There can be little doubt Hamas's massive rocket barrage against Israel on Saturday was the product of its sense that Egypt is now on its side.

As for the Suez Canal, the junta's behavior so far is a cause for alarm. Binding UN Security Council Resolution 1747 from 2007 bars Iran from shipping arms. Yet last month the junta thumbed its nose at international law and permitted two Iranian naval ships to traverse the canal without being inspected.

Glick continues with Egypt, noting that, "On every level, a post-Mubarak Egypt threatens the US core interests that Mubarak advanced." Glick then discusses the implications of the situation in Libya in the same vein. Finally, she warns that until and unless America starts acting on behalf of its own interests, its actions will harm itself.

Again, read the whole thing.

-- CAV

----- In Other News -----

At The New Clarion, Myrhaf states, "This piece in the New York Times about pharmaceutical companies is depressing. Government intervention is destroying the drug industry." [emphasis added] From the article itself: "The new law also contains a major threat to drug industry profits in a little-known section that would allow centralized price-setting."

Meanwhile, here's another threat to American innovation: patent "reform." "The new system would award patents based on who filed an application first rather than who originally generated the idea."

Paul Krugman warned us about himself at least nine years ago. As quoted by Rick Danker of Forbes:

To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

The idea of attempting to ride economic bubbles to prosperity was a lot funnier when I first encountered it in The Onion.

The First Golfer

A few days ago, I ran across news that former Vice President Dan Quayle defended President Obama from attacks leveled by his political opponents over his enthusiasm for golf. (The RNC has done this in the past.) Quayle counters two aspects of such criticism with a much-needed dose of reality:

"I'm glad he's out playing golf. I happen to be a golfer," Quayle said on the Fox Business Network. "I think presidents deserve down time. And believe me, he is in constant communication with what's going on."

...

[W]hat do you want him to do, stay in his house and be on the phone with the ambassador to Japan all the time?" [link omitted]

Yes. We all need recreation, and yes, the President is easy to reach if he's needed. Those are excellent points, but perhaps more excellent than Quayle himself realizes: They reveal such attacks to be ill-informed at best, raising the question of why they are leveled at all. This opponent of Obama's, for one, regards his policies as so bad for America, I'd frankly rather he spent much more time on the links!

This complaint is a sleazy attempt to portray the Chief Executive as derelict, and reminds me of other, similar complaints about his competence in that it raises entirely the wrong issue at the expense of failing to take his agenda or policies to task. Indeed, the attacks themselves are incompetent, for they implicitly concede the premise that what Obama wants to accomplish would be just fine, if only it were more ruthlessly and efficiently executed. In other words, when such attacks are leveled by the likes of the RNC, whose members know better, they are also derelict, and reveal intellectual bankruptcy.

-- CAV

----- In Other News -----

John Cook discusses radiation units and links to a graphic comparison of the relative safety levels of various energy sources in "deaths per Terawatt hour."

XKCD posts a great graphic on radiation doses.

Mark your calendars! Edison Hour is at 8:30 p.m. this Saturday. This is the opposite of "Earth Hour," and is called "Human Achievement Hour" by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Fantasy Fail

Emily Yoffe, Slate's advice columnist, delivers a well-deserved and, almost certainly, much-needed slap in the face to a man who confesses that he "married ... a gorgeous younger woman" who isn't "particularly interesting or, and I hate to say this, bright," and yet, wants:

... a middle path that allows me to continue my marriage (the sex is incredible) while not forcing me to give up on having a stimulating partner with whom I can share my interests.

She lets this guy have it, and ends her column by urging him to do the honorable thing by letting her go, but not before nicely essentializing the fundamental error of his whole approach to finding (or keeping) a romantic partner:

You married a woman who turned you on but whom you neither respected nor had interest in as a person.

Many people seem, thanks to the mind-body dichotomy, to see dating as an either-or proposition between meeting dumb, physically attractive people and smart, unattractive people. That short-changes everyone involved because one, being a complete person, needs a complete person as a partner, and there is no way to just look at someone and know whether that person is suitable.

Had the man above taken more time to get to know his wife, he probably would have moved on. Conversely, had the man spent more time getting to know interesting people than playing pick-up artist, he might have met a soul-mate who didn't look half-bad, or even whose appearance was more than made up for by her other qualities.

Regarding the link to "pickup artist" above, it is just one of several hair-pullingly bad posts and discussions about a kind of approach to dating (if that's even the right word) I have encountered lately at some otherwise perspicacious blogs, which is probably why the Dear Prudie column piqued my interest this morning. I see that whole self-congratulatory, deterministic, and pseudo-scientific approach as a caricature of almost every kind of mistake men (at least) make regarding the process of finding a romantic partner today.

I'm not going to comment on what's wrong with determinism here, nor will I belabor the point that a conclusion in a field (e.g., psychology) that contradicts a truth from a field fundamental to it (e.g., philosophy) indicates that the conclusion (and not the fundamental truth) should be discarded. What I will note is that the ends determine the means, and anyone who sees all their potential partners as robots to be duped with the "right" algorithm will tend to fail to find themselves paired with the kind of human being they need, or, needless to say, in love.

-- CAV

3-19-11 Hodgepodge

Experience Isn't Everything

A sycophantic write-up in the New York Sun on the "Palin Doctrine" (part of which appears to be on the way to being carried out with American help) illustrates to me just how rudderless this administration's foreign policy really is.

[A]sking that a UN "no-fly zone" be imposed over Libya -- is not only without precedent but it puts in formal terms what Governor Palin stated three weeks ago should have been America's response to the political and humanitarian crisis now unfolding there.

... Mrs. Palin's formulation had been blogged about for nearly a week when it was echoed by the man who, before the Iraq war, had led the Iraq democratic movement in exile, Ahmed Chalabi.

...

Mrs. Palin also continues to link America's energy policy -- a realm in which she has experience -- and U.S. foreign and anti-terrorism policies. She recognizes that the ongoing transfer of billions of U.S. petro-dollars to unstable or even hostile Mideast regimes has, since the formation in 1973 of the Organization of Petoleum Exporting Countries, been an drain on U.S. financial resources.

Just give a bullhorn to a popular (if clueless) figure, and watch what happens...

In the context of America's decades of appeasement and half-measures in the Middle East, I can understand Chalabi's endorsement of a no-fly zone. But regarding American interests, Palin's "doctrine" will: make petroleum even more needlessly expensive than it now is, continue the handover of the Middle East (and its oil) to Islamic totalitarians, and further entrench America's "allergy to self assertion."

Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute eloquently sums up what needs to be done, generally, in the Middle East, in the article at the last link:

Another means of addressing the threat would be to remove Middle Eastern oil fields from Iranian and Saudi control, put them in the hands of private companies, and then employ surveillance and troops to secure that oil supply. Contrary to popular assumption, Middle Eastern dictatorships have no right to their nationalized oil fields, which should be private property--the property of individuals who work to find and extract the oil.

A no-fly zone created to support an uprising we have good reason to believe won't simply result in replacing one hostile regime with another can be a useful tactic. Nevertheless, I see nothing in Palin's energy policy or the rest of what I know of her foreign policy to suggest that she sees this no-fly zone as part of a broader plan to advance American interests in the Middle East.

With opposition "leaders" like Palin, I see no reason not to expect a second term for Barack Obama.

Weekend Reading

"For a company that received numerous bailouts exceeding $17 billion dollars in total, it takes chutzpah to run ads promising to 'treat your money like it's actually yours.'" -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Ally Bank's Straight Talk Is Crooked" at Smart Money

"In this chatty age when just about anybody, qualified or not, can mount their electronic soapbox and spout off, the quiet demeanor of a pet can be a welcome relief." -- Michael Hurd, in "Pets Are Life's Little Perks" at DrHurd.com

From The Vault

Last year, I took a look at why I liked a rule of cell phone etiquette so much.

The rule?

If you're in a situation where you'd excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, you should also excuse yourself before reaching for your phone.

Farhad Manjoo dubbed this "the bathroom rule."

Why did I like it?

It succinctly illustrates the power of principles to guide our actions no matter what new or strange situation we find ourselves having to navigate.

I often find questions of etiquette interesting, and, in that post, I quoted my favorite commentator on etiquette, Judith Martin.

Hipster How-Tos

How to be one, and how to catch one. Useless information to me, but quite amusing.

-- CAV

Four on Insight

I always enjoy good examples of insightful thinking, and I came across several this week. I will present them here in no particular order.

1. Reader Dismuke emails a link to a post at Watts up with That? describing an intuitive way to think about radiation doses.

Many foods are naturally radioactive, and bananas are particularly so, due to the radioactive potassium-40 they contain. The banana equivalent dose is the radiation exposure received by eating a single banana. Radiation leaks from nuclear plants are often measured in extraordinarily small units (the picocurie, a millionth of a millionth of a curie, is typical). By comparing the exposure from these events to a banana equivalent dose, a more intuitive assessment of the actual risk can sometimes be obtained.

It is interesting to note that this is the first time I've heard this useful analogy in years. It's easy to imagine why -- ignorance or worse -- you won't hear this analogy used by the fear mongers. The more interesting question is this: Why aren't those working to calm the hysteria bringing it up now? Speaking for myself, I simply hadn't thought of it. But I can also see someone used to thinking about nuclear power focusing too much on getting out technical details and too little on the problem of communicating them to a general audience.

2. Over at the Endeavour, John Cook presented three good quotes about originality some time ago. I particularly like Paul Graham's (and Howard Aiken's):

People like the idea of innovation in the abstract, but when you present them with any specific innovation, they tend to reject it because it doesn't fit with what they already know. … As Howard Aiken said, "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."

I'll hasten to add my own codicil to Aiken: "The fact that someone is ramming his idea down your throat does not necessarily make it a good idea."

That said, Graham and Aiken show insight about the processes of both innovation and communication here. The innovator makes a connection nobody else has ever made: But that very fact means he will have to figure out how to help people appreciate what he has seen before he will profit from that insight -- or he will have to find someone else who can sell it for him.

3. And, speaking of Paul Graham and sales, the venture capitalist presents an interesting email exchange in which, as he puts it, "You can see [the investor's] mind at work as he circles the deal." The investor has to consider several difficult issues, among them: Is this a sound idea? If so, is there room in the existing marketplace for this idea? If so, who are these people, and do they have what it takes to make money off this idea?

In other words, we have an example of part of the other side of the communications dilemma facing any innovator, mentioned above. For any potential supporter, evaluating an idea will occur in multiple steps in all of the areas concerning (for example): the merit of the idea, the market conditions, and the quality of the people. On top of that, such questions will often be interrelated. For example, "Is this a good idea?" can be asked at a broad, conceptual level, a brass-tacks practical level, and at the level of whether it hasn't already been implemented in some non-obvious way (for a few examples). Part of evaluating the idea hinges, for example, on questions as to the competence of the people putting it forward both within their fields and on evaluating things outside their fields.

4. Back at the Endeavour again, we have a war story that shows an amusingly easy-to-explain insight that was made in a very counterintuitive way:

During WWII, statistician Abraham Wald was asked to help the British decide where to add armor to their bombers. After analyzing the records, he recommended adding more armor to the places where there was no damage!

Wald's insight came, not from myopically zeroing in only on the data he had, but by also making masterful use of the context from which his data arose.

-- CAV

Antinuclear Hysteria

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the news reporting about Japan's horrendous earthquake and tsunami has been the inordinate emphasis on the situation at the nuclear power plants that suffered damage. Indeed, as jaded by environmentalist hysteria as I am, I have still been astounded by the anti-nuclear power commentary, protests, and political machinations that have followed this -- although I should not have been. As I noted after reading an article about some allegedly pro-nuclear greens some years ago:

If they really cared about saving human lives and they really equated nuclear power with Chernobyl, they would not line up behind it now.

Based on that, and what I've been seeing in the news media, most environmentalists (a) understand nuclear power so poorly that they really do think (incorrectly!) that any such power plant is a "Chernobyl waiting to happen," (b) they don't care how or why nuclear power is actually quite safe generally (and, in particular, Chernobyl isn't going to happen in Japan), or (c) both.

To do my small part in injecting a rational perspective into this debate, I'll recommend a look at this situation from a couple of perspectives:

• Broad "A Meltdown Of Fearmongers" -- This article considers the safety of nuclear power within the context of the safety of other forms of energy and debunks a few of the more common ... misconceptions ... in the media. (Don't be put off by the superfluous references to global warming.)
  
• Technical (But Accessible to Laymen) "Why I Am Not Worried about Japan's Nuclear Reactors" -- Originally by Josef Oehmen of MIT, but edited by a group of nuclear power students from MIT. This group is also now tracking developments on a blog. Based on my past experience as a nuclear-trained submarine officer, the post is a good place to gain a grasp of what the potential hazards are, as well as how they are countered by an integration of plant design, normal and emergency operating procedures, and training practices.

Here are a few other useful sources of information, recommended by a couple of regular commenters at an earlier post a couple of days ago:

• The protests are already starting, and Alex Epstein has already found some excellent rebuttals to the madness. -- kelleyn
• [B]ecause of the press of events it's hard to get good information even from people who know what's what. The best one I've found is this. [link added] -- Mike
• [There is] a good overview of the plant design here, though it turned out within a day to have been rather too sanguine about the consequences of the earthquake and tsunami. [link added] -- Mike

There is, doubtless, more out there that I simply haven't had the time to consider. If you've seen other good reporting or commentary out there, feel free to pass it along in the comments.

-- CAV

Updates

3-18-11: I forgot to add a good, intuitive presentation of how to think about radiation dosage, called, "Going Bananas over Radiation" (HT: Dismuke).

3-22-11: (1) John Cook discusses radiation units and links to a graphic comparison of the relative safety levels of various energy sources in "deaths per Terawatt hour." (2) XKCD posts a great graphic on radiation doses.

Rights off the Rails

There is much I disagree with in Megan McArdle's Atlantic piece on "When Rail Becomes Ridiculous," but she makes an intriguing point about a couple of central planning proposals for bullet trains:

[I]s it really a good demonstration project if the train doesn't have any passengers? Or if the people to whom you've demonstrated it finish their trip in Bakersfield, sans car? It seems to me that this is a very good way to demonstrate cost overruns, disappointing passenger figures, and a single-minded committment [sic] on the part of rail advocates that defies common sense.

McArdle is right, but, alas, not as right as she fears. Have you ever heard of the "bridge to nowhere?" There are countless similar examples of blatant government waste right under our noses, not to mention ripple effects from central planning schemes. Indeed, Frederic Bastiat eloquently described such ripple effects in his parable of the "Broken Window" over 150 years ago.

As an environmentalist who wants the government to build railroads, McArdle should take heart for the same reason I, a rail buff who wants rail built only by private enterprises seeking profits, should be alarmed: We have mountains of similar evidence that central planning makes no economic sense and economists have understood this for the better part of two centuries -- and yet such evidence and understanding have little sway over public policy today. Worse, even some professed advocates of capitalism still seem to think that all we need is ... more evidence!

There are two broad problems here, the lesser of which is that the public is economically illiterate and used to the government planning practically everything to do with the infrastructure. The far greater problem is that most people (including many who think of themselves as pro-free-market) do not think in terms of principles.

[A] pro-capitalist would know what capitalism is, what it requires (full government protection of individual rights), and why statism and anarchy are inferior, and dangerous to [his] survival... He would know these things because he would rely upon free market principles when thinking about the economy. And he would know that if he doesn't rely on such principles -- if he "abandons" -- them, he will have no way to decide what [policy] is best...

To such an individual, the bridge to nowhere, bullet trains in the sticks, and, for that matter, any proposal to compel people to pay for anything (outside fines or restitution for criminal offenses) are simply examples of violations of property rights, and he will oppose them as such. To someone who doesn't think in terms of principles (even if he considers himself capitalist), they will merely be individual, unconnected examples of "inefficient" government, and he will forever spin his wheels fantasizing about making the government better at performing an impossible task: Having a comparatively few people attempting to run an entire economy. In the meantime, these same bureaucrats and do-gooders will succeed in trampling his property rights, and he will scratch his head (if he's lucky enough to be merely frustrated) about all the poor decisions they keep making.

There is no bullet train to freedom in America. Voters have to begin to see again why any and all government interventions in the economy should be opposed, and they will not do so until there are more people making principled cases for capitalism.

-- CAV

On Making One's Case

Thomas Sowell makes the following observation about the longstanding inability of the Republican Party to win support from black voters:

... In California, a substantial black population has simply been forced by economics to vacate many communities near the coast and move farther inland, where the environmental zealots are not yet as strong politically, and where housing prices are therefore not yet as unaffordable.

With all the Republican politicians' laments about how overwhelmingly blacks vote for Democrats, I have yet to hear a Republican politician publicly point out the harm to blacks from such policies of the Democrats as severe housing restrictions, resulting from catering to environmental extremists.

If the Republicans did point out such things as building restrictions that make it hard for most blacks to afford housing, even in places where they once lived, they would have the Democrats at a complete disadvantage.

...

[N]one of this matters so long as Republicans who want the black vote think they have to devise earmarked benefits for blacks, instead of explaining how Republicans' general principles, applied to all Americans, can do more for blacks than the Democrats' welfare state approach.

Sowell concentrates on an acute problem the Republican Party faces in attracting enough votes to win elections, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Why stop an outreach with just blacks, and why just show how harmful central planning is? There are votes to be had for any politician who would take an uncompromising stand for the benefits of freedom, rather than positioning himself as merely in favor of less government meddling in our lives.

Republican difficulties in attracting the black vote are not some historical peculiarity that the party can fix simply by showing how harmful a few Democratic policies are to a fraction of the population. Rather, their difficulties are a symptom of many factors, not the least of which is that the Republicans actually don't fully embrace or understand capitalism: If they did, they'd have, for example, vigorously opposed environmentalism (with its easily-foreseeable consequences) from Day One. Or they wouldn't have attempted to enact socialized medicine "lite" as Nixon tried to do, or offered plans similar to ObamaCare when they "fought" HillaryCare. And they would not now be talking about repealing ObamaCare only to replace it with another central planning scheme.

Sowell is completely right about the need for pro-caplitalist politicians to "make [a] case in the first place," but someone who inconsistently supports capitalism or fundamentally opposes it will be unable to make such a case convincingly, if at all. Unless the Republican Party becomes more consistently pro-freedom, it will continue ceding electoral and legislative ground to the left, and potential voters will understandably fail to support it.

-- CAV

An Engineering Miracle

Out-of-town guests over the weekend and a minor emergency overnight have kept me mostly away from the news and a good night's sleep. (Fortunately, everything is fine.) Nevertheless, the tragic events in Japan have been inescapable. On that score, John Cook passes along the observation that engineering and high construction standards probably saved millions of lives from the earthquakes there. As he put it, "[I]t's natural to only see the people who died and not the people who did not."

This observation is quite similar to one I once made regarding a Greyhound bus crash:

But this wasn't dumb luck! This was an example of human genius in action, but the clue was mentioned only in passing: The bus "broke through the railing of a bridge." That railing impeded the bus enough to save all on board, and the engineers who designed it never came up. Were it not for the men who thought about how to make that highway as safe as it turned out to be, that bus would have plunged into the river and we'd have been reading about fatalities.

In closing, I'll note that I don't agree with the near-universal assumption that the government should dictate construction standards (or the similar idea that people would not adopt such standards on their own). This means that my headline -- had I thought of making the point so creatively -- would have been simpler than Dave Ewing's: "Engineers Save Millions in Japan."

-- CAV

3-12-11 Hodgepodge

Death Threats in Wisconsin

It is remarkable that so soon after leftists unjustly blamed political "rhetoric" for the Tucson shootings, we are hearing reports of death threats against some of the Wisconsin state senators who recently voted to remove most collective bargaining powers for public workers.

"This is another example of the anger which is being spewed by the government unions," [Sen. Glenn] Grothman said. "This has been all about intimidating ... Republican legislators into bowing to the public unions, and it has only steeled our resolve."

Grothman said he is hesitant to completely disregard the threat given the volatile atmosphere in Madison. A note shoved under his door Wednesday night said, "The only good Republican is a dead Republican."

I have, in the past, attributed leftist caricatures of their political opponents as "violent" to psychological projection and heard others do the same. It looks like there is something to be said for that notion.

On a positive note, I am glad to see these legislators stand up to such threats.

Weekend Reading

"If being exploited means being able to schedule an MRI appointment for myself in twenty-four hours with my iPad using the free WiFi at the local coffee shop while sipping on a latte, rather than waiting six months on a government waiting list, I’ll take the capitalist version of exploitation any day." -- Paul Hsieh, in "Socialized Medicine: Theory Versus Practice" at Liberty Ink Journal

"The lesson to heed is we're not stock investors or bond investors or commodity investors. Whether we admit it or not, each of us is an absolute-return investor with one goal only: making money over time." -- Jonathan Hoenig, in "Absolute-Return Investing: The New Black" at SmartMoney

"Cognitive psychology assumes that ideas are the cause of emotions." -- Michael Hurd, in "Figuring out Your Feelings" at DrHurd.com

"Imagine a world without health insurance." -- Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, in "The Road to Socialized Medicine Is Paved With Preexisting Conditions – Part 2" at Forbes

My Two Cents

Brook and Watkins invite the reader to perform a thought experiment in the first line of their latest column, which I quote above. Step One is to put on the shoes of a health insurer. And so it is that the column is the first to my recollection that enables readers to see health insurers as fellow human beings, thereby illustrating (on yet another level) the inhumanity of altruist-collectivist proposals to dictate the terms of health insurance.

Making a Virtue out of a Drawback

I recently discussed why I probably would go with a new netbook over an iPad (or similar device) a while back, but nevertheless found this Lifehacker article in favor of tablets as productivity tools interesting:

Another situation in which the lack of true multitasking is actually good: You're always focused on the one thing you're doing right then.

The "insane battery life" earlier in the article hooked me, but this lost me again. I need multitasking ability enough of the time that this is still a deal-breaker for me.

-- CAV

A Crime Story

In part because my Dad was a cop and in part because such stories illustrate that reality is on the side of the good guys, I enjoy accounts detailing how notorious criminals are eventually caught. That said, it may come as a surprise to learn that I was unfamiliar with how Charles Ponzi, who lends his name to a type of fraudulent investment scheme, was finally exposed.

I ran across a brief account of Ponzi and his scheme recently at Mental Floss and laughed out loud when I read about how a last-ditch effort of his to maintain credibility with "investors" backfired.

Things were starting to look less rosy for the scammer, though. Although he'd largely placated his investors after Barron's report [Yes. That Barron --ed], Ponzi must have realized his window of opportunity was closing. He hired a publicist, William McMasters, but the PR man saw through Ponzi's lies and renounced his client in the press. James Walsh reprints part of McMasters' slam of Ponzi in his book, You Can't Cheat An Honest Man. Of Ponzi, McMasters said, "The man is a financial idiot. He can hardly add... He sits with his feet on the desk smoking expensive cigars in a diamond holder and talking complete gibberish about postal coupons." [emphasis in original, minor format edits]

The gibberish -- which a New York Times blogger incorrectly implies is the essence of the scheme -- was about a perfectly legal (but highly impractical -- search "tape" and "overhead" here) arbitrage scheme Ponzi used to dupe people into handing over their money. Interestingly enough, some research and a little simple arithmetic could have shown anyone that this scheme was not the source of Ponzi's huge returns because it could not have been:

While [Wall Street Journal owner Clarence] Barron conceded that there probably was a way for a person to make a small amount of quick cash on the postal reply coupon scheme, he figured that Ponzi would have to be moving 160 million coupons around to raise the cash he needed to support the business. Since there were only 27,000 postal reply coupons circulating in the world, Ponzi's story didn't check out.

Indeed, Ponzi himself practically offered a public confession, via his actions, to the press once he started becoming famous:

... Ponzi told newspapers he invested his own cash in real estate, stocks, and bonds like any normal investor. Barron pointed out the obvious question here: if Ponzi had this failsafe scheme in which he could make a 50% profit, why was he putting his own money into plain old investment instruments that would give him (maybe) a 5% return? [emphasis in original]

As mentioned above, a 2008 book about Ponzi is titled You Can't Cheat an Honest Man. I am otherwise unfamiliar with the book and exactly why its author chose its title, but it certainly sounds apt: It is plain to me that many of Ponzi's victims could have spared themselves simply by looking into whether and how such an arbitrage scheme could be put into practice on the scale needed to provide a return on a large investment. (Or, failing that, they could have refrained from handing over large amounts of money for investment into something they did not really understand.)

While it hardly makes what Ponzi did any better, many of his victims did, in fact, fail to ask him hard questions or compare notes with someone knowledgeable about international postage reply coupons. To the extent that this failure was due to evasion of the fact that they were risking lots of money, his victims got what they deserved.

-- CAV

Bad Yardsticks

Apparently, I wasn't the only person contemplating the effect of digital technology on the economy Tuesday morning. A similarly-themed article appeared at Slate the same day.

[T]he Internet and computers tend to push costs toward zero, and have the capacity to reduce the need for labor. You are, of course, currently reading this article for free on a Web site supported not by subscriptions, but by advertising. You probably read a lot of news articles online, every day, and you probably pay nothing for them. Because of the decline in subscriptions, increased competition for advertising dollars, and other Web-driven dynamics, journalism profits and employment have dwindled in the past decade. (That Cowen writes a freely distributed blog and published his ideas in a $4 e-book rather than a $25 glossy airport hardcover should not go unnoted here.) Moreover, the Web- and computer-dependent technology sector itself does not employ that many people. And it does not look set to add workers: The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that employment in information technology, for instance, will be lower in 2018 than it was in 1998. [links omitted]

In other words, increased productivity that manifests as more bang for the buck can easily go unmeasured by a money-based metric. As Annie Lowrey says later, "Maybe it is not the growth that is deficient. Maybe it is the yardstick that is deficient."

I will add now that one thing that neither Lowrey's article nor my post discuss is the economic drag of taxation, inflation, and government regulation on our economy. All these factors can skew such an analysis in unexpected ways, particularly the last.

-- CAV

***

In Other News

Fans of my old "Quick Roundup" miscellany posts will, I hope, be happy to learn that I have decided to bring them back, after a fashion. A while back, I decided to stop creating such posts more than once a week in order to save time. (My "Hodgepodge" weekend posts are the outgrowth of that decision.)

The extra time has been nice, but I frequently end up omitting lots of "blogworthy" material my readers might find interesting. On top of that, my plan to compensate by posting twice a few days of the week fell by the wayside long ago. My solution will be to add a short section to the end of some posts with the title above.

I will usually not make lengthy comments, again in the interest of saving time, so this new feature will typically look like this:

One-Line Blog Review: Enjoy The Futility Closet, but know that if you spend too much time there, you may find yourself in the hurt locker!

A Must-Read on Unions: Thomas Sowell busts several "Union Myths," first and foremost, "that unions are for the workers."

Power Rationing in England: As excerpted at The Tattler: "[T]he government-regulated utility will be able to decide when and where power should be delivered, to ensure that it meets the highest social purpose." (HT: HBL)

Adapting to Blindness: Amit Ghate links to a very long, but fascinating and inspirational story about a man who uses echolocation to "see," teaches others how to do so, and is helping to develop related technology to the point that, "If money were no object, ... blind people could essentially mimic bats within five years."

Updates

3-17-11: Corrected link to "Union Myths" article.

What "Replace" Means

Nearly a year ago, I noticed the terms of the debate over ObamaCare take the following unfortunate turn:

It's bad enough that [Republican Senator Mitch] McConnell has just fallen into the "What have you got?" trap that Barack Obama laid for him in the form of his February health care summit "invitation." All the Democrats have to say to this is, "Where was this proposal back in February?" What's worse are the huge holes in understanding on many levels this reveals...

Specifically, I was speaking of McConnell's battle cry of "repeal and replace," which is really just a verbal white flag of surrender: It leaves unchallenged the premise that we need central planning in medicine, and, as I recently commented, it allows the likes of Barack Obama to pass off essentially similar plans as reasonable concessions.

Ezra Klein shows us how this shakes out in practice in a column titled, "Republicans Need to Take a Stand on Health-Care Reform," which preempts a real free-market solution by equating "taking a stand" with making some sort of proposal based on central planning. The demonstration comes in large part in the form of a history lesson, in which Klein portrays a party animated for decades by expedience over principle, towards the goal of gaining political power over advancing freedom. Did you know, for example, that Nixon actually attempted to pass his own medical plan, at one point, only to be stopped by the Democrats?

Not only are we lucky not to already have a completely government-run medical sector, that is where we'll end up regardless of the fate of Obama's particular proposal, given how the Republicans themselves have framed their "opposition":

The GOP knew this day would come. In May 2009, Republican message-maestro Frank Luntz released a polling memo warning that "if the dynamic becomes 'President Obama is on the side of reform and Republicans are against it,' then the battle is lost." Repeal, Luntz argued, wouldn't be good enough. It would have to be "repeal and replace." And so it was.

So it is that our history lesson shows us that this battle was lost (at least) nearly a year in advance!

The phrase "free market reform" has its own problems: For one thing, the notion of "reforming" any system of central planning is ludicrous. Nevertheless, it would have at least helped people imagine, in the debate leading up to the vote on ObamaCare, that tackling the problems it is supposed to solve need not (or, dare we imagine, should not) involve the government stealing money, goods, and services, and otherwise ordering people around.

If the Republicans lost to Obama due to a failure to see (or stand up for) freedom as reform last year (and the year before), what makes them think they can get anywhere with the same losing strategy now that ObamaCare has been passed? Klein is correct: The Republicans did see this day coming. But if Luntz's thinking is any indication, they quickly put it out of their minds and hoped to defeat this horrible idea by simply procrastinating.

-- CAV

Electronic Competition

Some time over the past week, I recall feeling minor irritation while reading some commentary about technology. Sadly, I don't recall anything else about the piece, so I can't link to it here. But that doesn't matter for the same reason I was annoyed with the piece: It breezily insinuated that "the productivity statistics" didn't reflect well on the decision by many businessmen to adopt computers back in the 1990s.

There was no way to ascertain from that context-less assertion what was being measured by these statistics or how well (if at all) any confounding variables were accounted for. The statement was thus completely meaningless. And, given that some businesses probably adopted technology for reasons consonant with their needs, while others did so for the wrong reasons, it's not clear to me what such statistics could even mean.

This morning, I ran across a couple of interesting uses of technology that demonstrate what I mean: a writeup by Farhad Manjoo about HelloFax, a startup he thinks can "kill your fax machine," and a news report about the woes of brick-and-mortar electronics retailer Best Buy.

Manjoo's good news for people who (like myself) hate fiddling with fax machines may well be an early warning to people in the business of making and selling them:

Here's how HelloFax works. First, you sign a blank piece of paper. Then you take a picture of your signature and send it to the site. Now you're free to sign and send documents that you've got stored digitally. (In other words, HelloFax is only for e-mailing and faxing files that you can find online or that people have e-mailed you; you can't use it to fax a physical document.) To begin, you upload your form to HelloFax. The system understands a wide range of file types, including PDFs, Word documents, and several more esoteric ones. HelloFax transforms the document into an image, and then it lets you add text to that image; this allows you to fill out your name, age, SSN, and other information on virtually any kind of form. Because HelloFax treats your document as an image, you do have to manually position the cursor in each box—in other words, you can't hit tab to go from field to field -- but I still found it pretty easy to do.

When you're done filling in your form, click "Add Signature" and HelloFax will pop in the scribble that you photographed earlier. (It has controls to let you move and scale your John Hancock to look just right.) Finally, enter the fax number or e-mail address of your recipient, and boom! You've just faxed something, and you didn't even have to leave your chair.

If, as Manjoo says earlier, "[t]he main reason faxing lives on, of course, is because of another ancient and mystifying custom: signing a piece of paper to make it official," this and other ways of circumventing fax machines means one thing to anyone in the business of making or selling them: adapt or perish.

I doubt that anyone would take the above story to mean that such businessmen should have fought digital technology tooth and nail. Furthermore, reduced profits by companies (or parts of companies) focused on fax machines would not necessarily reflect a "loss" of productivity: They would likely just be indirect evidence that many people have found a more productive (or less expensive, in terms of money or effort) way to transmit evidence of consent. (And furthermore, facsimile machines themselves have been improved through advances in digital technology.)

Certain brick-and-mortar retailers are similarly getting creamed by electronic competition. One of them is Best Buy, which, as Greg Melich of ISI Group notes, is being used by many consumers (including myself, sometimes) as "Amazon's 'showroom.'" Case in point: In '09, my wife wanted a netbook, so I went to Best Buy, where I found one that was just right for her -- except that I knew she wanted it in a certain color. I asked about its availability in that color and learned that, since it wasn't available at the store, I'd have to order it anyway. I left and ordered it (for less) from Amazon. (I don't know whether I would have had to return to the store for pick-up had I ordered through Best Buy, but I already knew I wouldn't have to if I ordered through Amazon. That is, as soon as I learned that Best Buy didn't have the right color in stock, buying through Amazon represented at most the same level of hassle.)

Best Buy is hardly obsolete: I wouldn't have so easily and quickly been able to make the call on which netbook to get my wife without the ability to compare models in person. But, either BestBuy will adapt to account for Amazon's strengths in pricing and delivery -- or someone else (perhaps Amazon itself or a brick-and-mortar partner) will take better advantage of Best Buy's customer service and value as a showroom.

It is undeniable that digital technology can make us much more productive. Measuring whether it does so (and by how much) for a business or industry is very difficult, and its very adoption anywhere in the economy can sometimes cloud such an analysis.

-- CAV

Iran's Hand

Caroline Glick paints a grim picture of a dangerous Middle East with Iran emerging as its dominant power.

... Iran's mullahs win no matter how the revolts pan out. If weakened regimes maintain power by appeasing Iran's allies in the opposition - as they are trying to do in Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Algeria, Bahrain, Oman and Yemen - then Iranian influence over the weakened regimes will grow substantially. And if Iran's allies topple the regimes, then Iran's influence will increase even more steeply.

Moreover, Iran's preference for proxy wars and asymmetric battles is served well by the current instability. Iran's proxies - from Hezbollah to al- Qaida to Hamas - operate best in weak states.

This not only echoes Leonard Peikoff's warnings about Iran (both at the time of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and again, after the atrocities of September 11, 2001), but it shows him to be correct. In addition, each time, Peikoff urged military action against that terrorist regime, and each times, our "leaders" continued our decades-long policy of appeasement and half-measures.

Glick informs us, along somewhat similar lines, that there is a ray of hope: There are protests against the mullahs in Iran, and we should support them.

So long as the Iranian regime remains in power, it will be that much harder for the Egyptians to build an open democracy or for the Saudis to open the kingdom to liberal voices and influences. The same is true of almost every country in the region. Iran is the primary regional engine of war, terror, nuclear proliferation and instability. As long as the regime survives, it will be difficult for liberal forces in the region to gain strength and influence.

I agree with Glick's last sentence, but disagree that supporting the protests is the only way to topple the mullahs. Sadly, as Glick indicates and news reports confirm, the Obama Administration is poised to do almost exactly the opposite of what it ought to be doing now.

-- CAV