As a former advocate of, and one still inclined towards lassez faire economic policies, it is disheartening to see people speak of free markets as if they are some sort of magic that works in all circumstances all the time. I have blogged a few times about the tragedy of the commons, a situation where limited supply meets unlimited demand, clogging the mechanisms of the free market and demanding a more authoritarian solution. Another weakness in free markets is the limited information and rationality of actors in the mix. Unfortunately for free market advocates like Walter Williams, the only information gap they notice is the twig in the government’s eye, while they steadfastly refuse to examine the beam that often exists in the populace’s eye.
"The big problem in any system, whether it's an economic, biological or ecological system, is information, communication and control. For congressmen, or a committee they select, to take over control of the nation's traffic signals requires a massive amount of information that they cannot possibly possess such as traffic flows at intersections, accident experiences and changes in peak and low peak traffic patterns.
The same information problem exists at the supermarket. Consider the challenge we give supermarket managers. We don't tell them in advance when we're going to shop, what we're going to buy and how much, but if they don't live up to this challenge, we're going to fire them by taking our business elsewhere. The supermarket manager does a fairly good job doing what's necessary to meet that challenge. You can bet the rent money that Congress couldn't begin to produce such a satisfactory outcome."
There are several problems here. First, in standard neo-con style, Williams supports his speculation, not with evidence, but with more speculation. "You can bet..." is not evidence. Have we ever had government run stores? Do we have data on the outcome? Second, Williams seems a little behind the curve in understanding modern information gathering techniques. All the information Williams claims the government could not get to determine optimal traffic light patterns is what the local governments collect now! Who does Williams think determines light sequences now, the Traffic Fairy? Taking periodic measures of traffic, checking accident reports, and compiling it all in a computer is hardly the impossible task Williams makes it out to be. In fact, compared to many other tasks done in similar fashion, it is quite simple.
Third, in Williams' supermarket example, he assumes perfect information on the part of consumers, and this is demonstrably wrong. The average consumer does not have knowledge of all prices of all desired items at all surrounding stores. Our decision making is imperfect. Whether or not it is less perfect than government decision making depends on the nature of the market, but to assume, as Williams does, that the free market always has better information than government is ideology speaking, not evidence. A perfect example is social security, which Williams rhetorically twists into an unrecognizable state:
"Right now Congress tells each American how much should be set aside out of his weekly paycheck for retirement. How can they have the information to know what's the best use for the $70, or so, taken from you and put into Social Security? Might you benefit more by saving that money to start a business, purchase tutoring lessons for your children, or putting it in a private retirement plan? Unlike congressional control of traffic signals and supermarkets, the effects of Social Security aren't apparent because we don't have the information about what people would have been able to accomplish if they were able to keep more of their earnings."
This is nonsense first word to last. Social security is a welfare plan for old people, not a retirement fund. Social security taxes are spent on social security benefits, not "put into" some sort of investment fund. Your social security taxes are not in any form or fashion "set aside for retirement". For a professional political writer to present it like this reveals a level of ignorance so profound as to call Williams' integrity into question. Were his dream of (apparently) doing away with social security realized, we would have an immediate welfare need as those currently on social security would suddenly find themselves with no benefits. Williams of course, doesn't talk about that.
There is a problem of ignorance in markets all right, but it mainly resides with people like Williams, who ignore well-documented problems with free markets such as inefficiencies in market knowledge for consumers, the tragedy of the commons, inherent societal problems like the retired poor (which unlike free-market problems must be dealt with in one form or another), and the level of efficiency possible with a centralized, computerized database. They offer as an alternative a blinkered belief in the efficiency of all free markets in all circumstances based on straw man caricatures of government programs and sheer emotionally-based speculation masquerading as evidence. So much for the party of facts over feelings.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Charlie Black? The Politics of Distraction
It seems we all need a reminder of who is running for president these days. Our candidates are John McCain and Barak Obama. Charlie Black, or Reverend Wright, or whoever else close to McCain or Obama who say or do something stupid isn't. This game of rhetorical gotcha is reminiscent of school yard gossip: "Did you hear what Charlie said, ummmmmmmmm". We need to hold our politics to a higher level than this. Who among us can be held responsible for everything their associates say, especially when what is said can be taken out of context.
What exactly did Charlie Black say that needed apologizing for anyway. Sure, it was a political blunder, the same as Obama's comment about the bitter among us clinging to their religion and guns. And just like Obama's bitter comment, Black is guilty of nothing more than speaking uncomfortable truth. His comment is just a restatement of current conventional wisdom on the issue of terrorism. Hell, the Republicans get criticism (and rightly so) all the time for using scare tactics to get votes. This wouldn't work unless what Black said was true: when people get scared, they run to the elephants.
We can recognize a political mistake while still maintaining our intellectual integrity. Reality matters, and people who state it, even when "it" is something we'd rather not consider, should be treated better than this. Oh, what George Carlin would have to say.
What exactly did Charlie Black say that needed apologizing for anyway. Sure, it was a political blunder, the same as Obama's comment about the bitter among us clinging to their religion and guns. And just like Obama's bitter comment, Black is guilty of nothing more than speaking uncomfortable truth. His comment is just a restatement of current conventional wisdom on the issue of terrorism. Hell, the Republicans get criticism (and rightly so) all the time for using scare tactics to get votes. This wouldn't work unless what Black said was true: when people get scared, they run to the elephants.
We can recognize a political mistake while still maintaining our intellectual integrity. Reality matters, and people who state it, even when "it" is something we'd rather not consider, should be treated better than this. Oh, what George Carlin would have to say.
Overexploited Oceans? Jellyfish are our Reward
In more bad news about our environment, the warming of the oceans combined with overfishing has allowed jellyfish to drive out more ecologically sound and, from a human perspective, more pleasant marine life:
The dramatic proliferation of jellyfish in oceans around the world, driven by overfishing and climate change, is a sure sign of ecosystems out of kilter, warn experts.
"Jellyfish are an excellent bellwether for the environment," explains Jacqueline Goy, of the Oceanographic Institute of Paris. "The more jellyfish, the stronger the signal that something has changed."
Brainless creatures composed almost entirely of water, the primitive animals have quietly filled a vacuum created by the voracious human appetite for fish.
Dislodging them will be difficult, marine biologists say.
"Jellyfish have come to occupy the place of many other species," notes Ricardo Aguilar, research director for Oceana, a international conservation organisation.
Nowhere is the sting of these poorly understood invertebrates felt more sharply than the Mediterranean basin, where their exploding numbers have devastated native marine species and threaten seaside tourism.
The over-exploitation of ocean resources by man has helped create a near-perfect environment in which these most primitive of ocean creatures can multiply unchecked, scientists say.
We never can seem to learn that nature abhors a vacuum, and that we simply cannot destroy something occupying a niche without something else moving into that niche. And in many cases, what moves in, like the jellyfish, is not exactly optimal from our POV.
The dramatic proliferation of jellyfish in oceans around the world, driven by overfishing and climate change, is a sure sign of ecosystems out of kilter, warn experts.
"Jellyfish are an excellent bellwether for the environment," explains Jacqueline Goy, of the Oceanographic Institute of Paris. "The more jellyfish, the stronger the signal that something has changed."
Brainless creatures composed almost entirely of water, the primitive animals have quietly filled a vacuum created by the voracious human appetite for fish.
Dislodging them will be difficult, marine biologists say.
"Jellyfish have come to occupy the place of many other species," notes Ricardo Aguilar, research director for Oceana, a international conservation organisation.
Nowhere is the sting of these poorly understood invertebrates felt more sharply than the Mediterranean basin, where their exploding numbers have devastated native marine species and threaten seaside tourism.
The over-exploitation of ocean resources by man has helped create a near-perfect environment in which these most primitive of ocean creatures can multiply unchecked, scientists say.
We never can seem to learn that nature abhors a vacuum, and that we simply cannot destroy something occupying a niche without something else moving into that niche. And in many cases, what moves in, like the jellyfish, is not exactly optimal from our POV.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Clintonites for Obama, Morons for McCain because of Obama's Name
In a new poll by AP-Yahoo, 53% of former Hillary supporters now say they would vote for Obama, whereas 23% say they will vote for McCain. This 30% margin is up considerably from April, where it was 16%. However, what really caught my eye was Hillary’s considerable moron contingency (she consistently outpolled Obama among the least educated voters) that McCain has apparently picked up:
The poll responses also show Obama has more work to do to quell fears among voters like Kirstie Hartle of Rome, N.Y., a registered Democrat who has never supported a Republican presidential candidate. With Clinton out of the race, Hartle said, "I'm Republican all the way now."
She said she doesn't like Obama's name and thinks he has a questionable background. She also said she thought Obama was deceitful when he broke from his church after it hurt his campaign, and she doesn't trust him to handle the Iraq war.
"It sounds to me like a Middle Eastern type of name and whether or not he's born here in the United States, he doesn't seem like, to me, somebody who is trustworthy," Hartle said in a telephone interview. "You can't trust anybody these days, so who's to say he's not a terrorist and we just don't realize it yet?"
"I refuse to vote for an Arab to be in my White House," said retired salesman Dean Johnson of Lanett, Ala. "That is the only factor. Otherwise, you couldn't break both my legs and make me vote for a Republican."
It is frightening that such people will be choosing the next leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Please, if you are as ignorant as Mr. Johnson and Ms. Hartle, and are thinking of voting for or against any candidate because of how his name sounds, by all means do the most patriotic thing you can do on November 4th and NOT VOTE. The rest of us are better off without you.
The poll responses also show Obama has more work to do to quell fears among voters like Kirstie Hartle of Rome, N.Y., a registered Democrat who has never supported a Republican presidential candidate. With Clinton out of the race, Hartle said, "I'm Republican all the way now."
She said she doesn't like Obama's name and thinks he has a questionable background. She also said she thought Obama was deceitful when he broke from his church after it hurt his campaign, and she doesn't trust him to handle the Iraq war.
"It sounds to me like a Middle Eastern type of name and whether or not he's born here in the United States, he doesn't seem like, to me, somebody who is trustworthy," Hartle said in a telephone interview. "You can't trust anybody these days, so who's to say he's not a terrorist and we just don't realize it yet?"
"I refuse to vote for an Arab to be in my White House," said retired salesman Dean Johnson of Lanett, Ala. "That is the only factor. Otherwise, you couldn't break both my legs and make me vote for a Republican."
It is frightening that such people will be choosing the next leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Please, if you are as ignorant as Mr. Johnson and Ms. Hartle, and are thinking of voting for or against any candidate because of how his name sounds, by all means do the most patriotic thing you can do on November 4th and NOT VOTE. The rest of us are better off without you.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Global Warming Denier: I'm not Cherry-picking, I Picked the Data that Fit my Hypothesis!
Sometimes people are so ignorant it is hilarious. This quote is from a commenter on Deltoid who tried to present the bogus cooling-since-1998 nonsense as a refutation of global warming, and had his cherry-picking pointed out to him:
"The accusation of cherry-picking against me is ridiculous. May 2008 is the latest available data, so I did not pick that. June 1997 is exactly 11 years ago, chosen to show just how long there has been no global warming."
Right, and you aren't repeating gossip, it's something you heard.
Seriously, it is no wonder the AGW denialists keep repeating the same mistakes like cherry picking. They are so ignorant they don't even know what it means, and why it is an invalid way to analyze data.
"The accusation of cherry-picking against me is ridiculous. May 2008 is the latest available data, so I did not pick that. June 1997 is exactly 11 years ago, chosen to show just how long there has been no global warming."
Right, and you aren't repeating gossip, it's something you heard.
Seriously, it is no wonder the AGW denialists keep repeating the same mistakes like cherry picking. They are so ignorant they don't even know what it means, and why it is an invalid way to analyze data.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Supreme Court Rules on 2nd Amendment
In the first conclusive ruling on the meaning of the second amendment, the Supreme court ruled 5-4 that Americans have the right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, striking down a Washington DC ban on new handguns and requirement that allowed weapons be disassembled or equipped with trigger locks.
"Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by ‘the historical narrative’ both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted. The Constitution does not permit ‘the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home,’ Scalia said. The court also struck down Washington's requirement that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, but left intact the licensing of guns.
In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority ‘would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.’ He said such evidence ‘is nowhere to be found.’"
I can’t help wondering what part of "shall not be infringed" Stevens doesn’t understand. Of course the 2nd amendment sets such limits, the question has always been exactly where, and now the court has ruled. Personally, I think we are long overdue for a constitutional convention to revise some of our constitutional rights, and the 2nd amendment is high on that list. Wise as they were, it is unreasonable to think the founding fathers were capable of writing laws over 200 years ago, in an agrarian society with flint locks, slavery, and limited rights for women, that would well serve our modern society with cities congested with millions of people capable of carrying around machine guns, flame throwers, and the odd missile launcher. When the Founders wrote the 2nd amendment in 1791, the US population was ~4 million. New York City alone has twice that figure now. It is a new time and we need new laws to go with it.
We also need to get a grip on reality when it comes to weapons. We need to accept that, contrary to media representations, accidental deaths by gun are rare. Over half of gun deaths are suicides. The typical victim of a gun in America is not an innocent child, or a gang banger. It is a depressed, middle-aged man who decides his life should end, and tragically, often takes his wife with him against her will. Marriage counselors would save more lives than trigger locks, so let’s drop that foolishness from the equation. Let’s also remember that crime in the United States is actually pretty low, approximately 14 events per 1,000 citizens annually, and that includes all crimes, large and small. Gun violence is also highly concentrated within certain demographic groups in society, mainly young urban males with criminal records. This is true both of the shooters and their victims. When it comes to dying by gun, who one associates with matters far more than how many guns are present.
With all that in tow, we should have a new 2nd amendment, one that protects an individuals right to own a weapon for defense of family and property, but one that recognizes the limits of such a right. Crucial among those limits is the understanding that where ever one may brandish a weapon, there are likely to be many people in the area that are innocent of any wrongdoing. Any weapon owned by a citizen therefore must be capable of being successfully fired at, and only at, the justified criminal target. Thus, flame throwers, bazookas, and atomic bombs do not qualify. The new 2nd amendment should read something like this:
"The right of the people to defend life and property, with weapons capable of being fired at a specific, individual target, and without unreasonable risk of tangential damage to innocent persons or property, and the right to bear such weapons, shall not be infringed"
I'll step aside and let the lawyers have at it. Our other problems with gun violence can be better served through means other than depriving law-abiding citizens of their right to defend themselves, or to collect weapons, or to go hunting.
"Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by ‘the historical narrative’ both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted. The Constitution does not permit ‘the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home,’ Scalia said. The court also struck down Washington's requirement that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, but left intact the licensing of guns.
In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority ‘would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.’ He said such evidence ‘is nowhere to be found.’"
I can’t help wondering what part of "shall not be infringed" Stevens doesn’t understand. Of course the 2nd amendment sets such limits, the question has always been exactly where, and now the court has ruled. Personally, I think we are long overdue for a constitutional convention to revise some of our constitutional rights, and the 2nd amendment is high on that list. Wise as they were, it is unreasonable to think the founding fathers were capable of writing laws over 200 years ago, in an agrarian society with flint locks, slavery, and limited rights for women, that would well serve our modern society with cities congested with millions of people capable of carrying around machine guns, flame throwers, and the odd missile launcher. When the Founders wrote the 2nd amendment in 1791, the US population was ~4 million. New York City alone has twice that figure now. It is a new time and we need new laws to go with it.
We also need to get a grip on reality when it comes to weapons. We need to accept that, contrary to media representations, accidental deaths by gun are rare. Over half of gun deaths are suicides. The typical victim of a gun in America is not an innocent child, or a gang banger. It is a depressed, middle-aged man who decides his life should end, and tragically, often takes his wife with him against her will. Marriage counselors would save more lives than trigger locks, so let’s drop that foolishness from the equation. Let’s also remember that crime in the United States is actually pretty low, approximately 14 events per 1,000 citizens annually, and that includes all crimes, large and small. Gun violence is also highly concentrated within certain demographic groups in society, mainly young urban males with criminal records. This is true both of the shooters and their victims. When it comes to dying by gun, who one associates with matters far more than how many guns are present.
With all that in tow, we should have a new 2nd amendment, one that protects an individuals right to own a weapon for defense of family and property, but one that recognizes the limits of such a right. Crucial among those limits is the understanding that where ever one may brandish a weapon, there are likely to be many people in the area that are innocent of any wrongdoing. Any weapon owned by a citizen therefore must be capable of being successfully fired at, and only at, the justified criminal target. Thus, flame throwers, bazookas, and atomic bombs do not qualify. The new 2nd amendment should read something like this:
"The right of the people to defend life and property, with weapons capable of being fired at a specific, individual target, and without unreasonable risk of tangential damage to innocent persons or property, and the right to bear such weapons, shall not be infringed"
I'll step aside and let the lawyers have at it. Our other problems with gun violence can be better served through means other than depriving law-abiding citizens of their right to defend themselves, or to collect weapons, or to go hunting.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Who's Talking Obama and Who McCain? Townhall vs Dailykos
As poll after poll shows Barak Obama extending his early lead over John McCain, I decided to see who everyone was blogging about. I did a quick search for Obama and McCain in the titles of the top 38 articles on both Townhall and Dailykos. The scoreboard shows the basic problem the Republicans have in this presidential election:
Representing the Republicans: Townhall
Obama: 7 mentions
McCain: 2 mentions
Representing the Democrats: Dailykos
Obama: 9 mentions
McCain: 3 mentions
So, in summary, the Republicans are talking about Obama, and the Democrats are talking about Obama. Issues don't matter much if your candidate just isn't interesting. In the television era, charisma and appearance are paramount, and McCain has neither. It is going to be an uphill climb overcoming these shortcomings.
Representing the Republicans: Townhall
Obama: 7 mentions
McCain: 2 mentions
Representing the Democrats: Dailykos
Obama: 9 mentions
McCain: 3 mentions
So, in summary, the Republicans are talking about Obama, and the Democrats are talking about Obama. Issues don't matter much if your candidate just isn't interesting. In the television era, charisma and appearance are paramount, and McCain has neither. It is going to be an uphill climb overcoming these shortcomings.
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