The Federal Government and Enron Accounting

I've blogged stories before about the questionable accounting used to tally the US federal budget deficit. A USA Today story is suggesting that even those more realistic assessments of the deficit (usually in the neighborhood of $700b) are far too low. They reached a similar number ($760b) just by applying some basic business accounting rules. But that assessment still does not account for social security and medicare liabilities. Standard corporate accounting practices require such liabilities to reported at the time they are incurred rather than when they come due. Using that system our annual budget deficits run around $3.5 trillion! By these measure the US should have reported $40t in losses over the past 9 years. The first step to solving a spending addiction is to admit you have a problem...

Corruption Watch: University Funding

Just a few quick hits today:

CSM has a strong article on the politicization of federal educational and research funding. It's just one more arena for compromised politicians to extend their tentacles into. Remember when Newt Gingrich built a Republican majority around the idea of clean government?

On to Lebanon. It seems that a small coalition of moderate-conservative realists is coalescing around the Andrew Sullivan blog. These include the Cunning Realist, Dan Drezner, and the Belgravia Dispatch. That last, the Belgravia Dispatch, is the source of the single best piece I've seen on Lebanon so far. Key point:

...this was more by way of an ill-advised temper tantrum than a serious military operation, as Arik Sharon would himself admit, if only he were aware of the disaster underway. Sharon would have recalled previous Lebanese quagmires and would have well understood (aided by the wisdom of years and the lack of any need to prove himself) that resort to airpower, in the main, cannot succeed in this context, with the specter of hundreds and hundreds of civilian deaths earning Israel international opprobrium in every world capital (save Washington), and that there is no real, sustained post-'82 appetite in Israel for a massive land incursion regardless, not least given the ultimate futility of same. No, Sharon would likely have chastised Ehud Olmert for his impestuous over-reaction, one so helpfully fanned on by myopic strategic blunderers and amateurs in Washington, both in policy and journalistic circles.

Also, here's a link to Ron Suskind's latest Miller Center appearance. He was there in late June speaking about the One Percent Doctrine. As always he was animated, entertaining, and insightful. He at moments comes off a little bit arrogant, a little pushy, and has the feel of a televangelist. But in general there probably isn't a more captivating speaker on politics and the Bush administration. I've gone back to the video of his last Miller Center speech several times, and I'm sure I'll come back to this one too.

And finally, this is a bit odd for TBWJ, but I thought I'd post a link to this TV ad. Yes it's for Dow Chemical, yes Dow is probably still evil. But it's some of the prettiest photography I've seen in any sort of video, much less a commercial. It plays sometimes before the PBS Newshour, and I can't recall the last time I was so riveted by a TV ad.

It's World War 3!!!!11!!!1

So there is much that could be said about the Middle East. But I think the most interesting part for me is an opportunity missed. Back when this started (even before Hezbollah became involved) this fellow in Syria, Khaled Meshaal, a member of Hamas, instigated a kidnapping in Gaza. The Hamas leadership in Palestine was obviously taken by surprise, and their initial impulse appears to have been to open a dialogue with Israel to contain the situation. They were initially willing to finally move on official recognition for Israel. The Palestinian PM, also a Hamas member, even wrote a column in the Washington Post asking not for the destruction of Israel, but for the 1967 borders, the right of return, and East Jerusalem, which is to say the usual peace framework. This was one of those rare dynamic moments where a balance has been upset and change can occur. Israel blew Hamas off and opted for overwhelming military force instead. Hamas soon withdrew their agreement to recognize Israel. I understand that Israel is reluctant to deal with groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, but at some point they will have to recognize that military force has yet to accomplish anything of significance against them. Israel spent 18 years in Lebanon, and left Hezbollah stronger than when they arrived. Military action may be a necessary element of the Israeli response to these incidents, but it will never be the element that produces meaningful progress. For that political and diplomatic action is necessary, and opportunities like the one Hamas presented are as good as it will possibly get.

Understanding Net Neutrality

This is an issue that interested me even before I started work this summer, but I've certainly been immersed in it these past few months. There is a great deal of confusion over it, and many misconceptions. It's really quite simple, but I think it helps to have a little bit of narrative context. From early on in the development of the US phone network up until the late 1960's AT&T (along with the regional Bell companies (RBOCs) that they controlled) was the telecom sector. Starting in the late 1960's the FCC started giving signs that they wanted to create competition, at least in some limited areas, for AT&T. Taking the hint from the FCC, MCI was created in late '60s with the intention of entering the long distance business, and during the 70's did a remarkable job of plugging themselves into the regulatory and legislative machines in DC. AT&T was not about to take this lying down, and a mighty battle ensued. In the end, MCI won and AT&T, as we all know, was broken up. But they were broken up to break their monopoly on long distance, meaning that the key was to sever their connection with the RBOCs, so that MCI and AT&T could both contract for long distance service with them. It left in place the RBOCs' monopolies on local access to consumers. In 1996 Congress tried to eliminate that monopoly as well. The FCC, in its wisdom, savaged this legislation, leaving the local access monopoly more or less in place. As things turned out, the long distance market was really not worth that much. It's so cheap now that companies can basically give it away, and in the context of voice over IP (VOIP) the entire concept of long distance becomes obsolete.

Local phone service, likewise should not be worth much. But the monopoly on local access allows for more than just the provision local phone service, it allows for providers to tie any other service delivered on those lines to the monopoly. The economic theories now dominant in antitrust law say that this should not be important, that tying of products to an existing monopoly should not allow the provider to milk that monopoly for more money than they could get for collecting rent on the monopoly directly. The efforts of the Bell companies to protect their ability to tie services to their access networks argues to the contrary. When Congress tried to break up those monopolies in the 1996 Telecom Act, the Bell companies spent (if I recall correctly) upwards of $250 million fighting against it in court and in front of the FCC. They won that battle, and for their efforts won the right to tie DSL broadband internet service to their monopoly. The cable companies piggy-backed on their efforts and convinced the FCC to give them similar treatment, ensuring us a duopoly on broadband internet service. Consequently we have fallen far behind competing nations on price/performance in the broadband market.

That brings us to net neutrality. Having extended their monopoly to provision of broadband internet, the Bell companies now want to push their monopoly still further, into provision of services over the internet. High speed internet has the ability to deliver phone and video (the equivalent of cable TV) over IP for very low prices. This threatens the monopoly rent that the phone and cable companies have collected on these services for a long time. Once consumers are purchasing their TV and phone service over the internet, the phone and cable companies will have no competitive advantage over other providers. Consequently, they will not deliver high speed internet access until they are guaranteed the ability to block competing voice and video services over those connections to preserve their duopoly (the pathetic broadband connections they now sell lack the bandwidth to provide video service). They may also try to collect rent from other online service providers like Amazon and eBay, but I don't think that's really the objective. And I would be very surprised if they ever got into the business of restricting free speech, or any of the other nightmare scenarios that some net neutrality supporters have suggested.

I'm as big a fan of net neutrality as there is. But it really doesn't go far enough. The phone and cable companies have got us by the balls on broadband service and are threatening to hold high speed connections hostage if they don't get what they want. And they're more than capable of doing just that. Hell, they've already done just that. Many other countries have 10+ Mb/s DSL connections and are seeing rollouts of 100 Mb/s fiber connections. We're stuck with 1 Mb/s connections and we're being overcharged for them. Congress needs to go back and finish what it was trying to accomplish in 1996: open up the local access duopoly. But it needs to do it right: complete divestiture of the local access loops. The network access business should be run like a utility. If that were done, net neutrality would be a meaningless concept, there would be no need for it. Competitive pressure would prevent any service providers from trying to block access to internet services.

Unfortunately, the phone companies have the DC muscle to prevent this from ever happening. They've already spent $50 million on net neutrality and appear to have scuttled an important telecom bill because Democrats (to their credit) wouldn't let it through the Senate without net neutrality. These are some of the costs we pay for having a government for sale to the highest bidder.

Off the Bandwagon

First order of business: I am officially off the John McCain bandwagon. It's one thing for McCain to whore himself out on various issues that may not have been critical to him. But he has long defined himself on the two issues of democratic reform and fiscal conservatism. When he declared himself in favor of making the Bush tax cuts permanent (as mentioned in this story) it became crystal clear to me that the John McCain I fell in love with no longer exists. He is, in the immortal words of Obi Wan, more machine now than man, twisted and evil. Perhaps someday when Emperor Cheney is flinging lightning into his son the little sliver of humanity left in McCain will resurface, but I'm not counting on it.

Missing In Action

Fellas, I apologize for neglecting the blog the past couple months. It's been a combination of factors. My work has kept me more busy during the day than has been the case in some time, and I've kept myself occupied in the evenings as well. Additionally, up until the past couple weeks I wasn't inspired much to write about things, and even then I mostly engaged in discussions in other venues. But I'm starting to feel like I've got a backlog of things discuss here, so I'm going to try and jumpstart things a bit. TBWJ has not come to an end. Of course, y'all have been a bunch of lazy bastards too.

What to Do When the Bomb Goes Off

Go around the the corner. Someone on /. pointed this out. It does not appear to intentionally satirical. It's hard not to love DHS..

Killing Innovation

I just wanted to link a fantastic article in the IEEE magazine on how the DMCA (and potentially the broadcast flag) harm technological innovation and development. Hardly an original argument, but they have some really great examples and illustrations. I wish I would have had this when Jane Ginsburg came to visit...

More Than Bullshit

While poking around Slate to find the Metcalf article linked in my Fukuyama post, I came across this article on Iraq by Fred Kaplan. Kaplan is roundly disappointed by the approach of John McCain and Condi Rice to the violence in Iraq, which in McCain's words is to tell them to "stop the bullshit." Kaplan is absolutely correct that this is not a mere matter of bullshit or miscommunication, there is a structural problem with Iraq that threatens to rip apart any democratic government put in place. It's the problem I posted on a month ago (May 2nd) that where people identify themselves more by ethnicity or religion than by other political concerns, democracy only deepens the divisions. Every election in the foreseeable future in Iraq will have the same outcome: Shiites win. If you are a Sunni or a Kurd, democracy means you lose.

The issue of how to structure a government that can satisfy all three groups was a major question before we even set foot in Iraq (and one I raised in several contexts pre-TBWJ). They tried to hash this out in the constitutional convention and failed miserably, and basically left the constitution completely open-ended, deferring the problem to later. Now Iraq has struggled month after month just to put together a government after the December election. They haven't even broached the difficult (and likely intractable) question of creating a coherent state in which Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds can all be satisfied. That is not bullshit. That is likely game over for our grand plan to plant the seed of democracy in the Middle East.

Breaking Iraq into three independent nations will have consequences we won't like (destabilizing Turkey (and possible Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia) and creating an Iranian client state in the south), but it may be the only way to end the violence. But as Kaplan points out, there is really no one who can implement a plan like that. The Shiites (who will rule the country as it now stands) have no interest in it. The US and the UN don't appear to have the ability or wherewithal to impose it. Iraq appears to be completely dead in the water, adrift in violence and chaos with no route out.

I give Kaplan credit as well for trying to establish the distinction between Realpolitik and realism that I've argued for here before.

Fukuyama on Neoconservatism

I watched a video tonight of Francis Fukuyama giving a talk at the Miller Center a couple weeks ago. Fukuyama, a very prominent neocon, released a book not that long ago critical of the neocons, and the first part of his talk was a critique on what the neocons got wrong on Iraq. Attacking the neocons on Iraq is, at this point, a shooting fish in a barrel type exercise. But it's interesting to hear the views of someone sympathetic to that philosophy. The second part of Fukuyama's presentation was a critique of the immense focus that the Bush administration has put on democratization, making it the centerpiece of their war on terror. Not that Fukuyama is critical of democratization as a long term objective, but that lack of democracy is not a core cause of terrorism. Then he took a half hour of questions (it's a one hour video), and they were mostly excellent questions. As one questioner notes, Fukuyama covers an immense amount of ground over the course of the hour, but, I think, covers every topic thoroughly.

I have never read any of Fukuyama's books, although I've seen them mentioned often. I have read some of his op-ed's and have generally not been a fan of them. I was, however, pretty much blown away by his performance at the Miller Center. There were only a few minor points where I disagreed with him (primarily his brief comments on domestic policy), and I found him to be very insightful and persuasive, particularly on the second part of his speech (the sources of terrorism) and his discussion of the application of American power in the post-Cold War environment. His presentation of the neocon philosophy as a counter to Kissengerian realism was also quite interesting and has some real merits. His criticism of Kissenger is, in fact, little different from my own. I highly recommend taking the time to sit down and watch this video.

Update: I just wanted to add a link to a great Slate article from last month discussing the Broken Windows theory that Fukuyama mentions. This is not a reference to the broken window fallacy, which is a perfectly good theory, but rather a cockamamie scheme by which major crimes can be reduced by harsh enforcement of minor infractions. The Metcalf article debunks the idea that Broken Windows was a key to crime reduction in New York, and argues that it is merely a nicely dressed up rejection of causal explanations for social phenomena that conveniently allowed Giuliani to bring the full force of the state to bear on socially undesired persons. I found it to be an interesting and persuasive argument and so was disappointed when Fukuyama appeared to give Broken Windows a ringing endorsement in his speech. That was really my only major quibble with what he had to say...

Let's Go Home

Former NSA director and retired military man William Odom has a great piece in Foreign Policy Mag advocating an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Odom argues that stability for Iraq exists only on the other side of a civil war at the end of which some sort of consolidation of power will occur. That's a more pessimistic view than I would endorse, but I think it's not far off. Odom also argues that every other element of our foreign policy and our war on terror is being held hostage by Iraq, and until we get out we will be unable to make any forward progress. My favorite part is his discussion of the political impacts of withdrawal:

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the world’s opinion of the United States has plummeted, with the largest short-term drop in American history. The United States now garners as much international esteem as Russia. Withdrawing and admitting our mistake would reverse this trend. Very few countries have that kind of corrective capacity. I served as a military attaché in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow during Richard Nixon’s Watergate crisis. When Nixon resigned, several Soviet officials who had previously expressed disdain for the United States told me they were astonished. One diplomat said, “Only your country is powerful enough to do this. It would destroy my country.”

Deficits Matter

Here's a brief update on how we've lost control of our own interest rates, and now sacrifice our economic welfare to fund the federal deficit.

Political Process

Hank, thanks for that post. It will take a while to process, and I'm afraid that my time is pretty limited these days. So I'll try to bite off a few bits at time. The basic question here is about decision-making and the costs and benefits of various approaches and how to evaluate particular issues to determine which approach is appropriate for that issue. The big question of trying to apply some generalized system and draw conclusions about whether we have enough or too much of one approach or another is an important one, but it's more than I'm willing to bite off without working through some of the ancillary issues.

First, I want to agree with you on the stupidity of this unidimensional visualization of politics that is popular in the U.S. There is a left and a right and various points in the middle and on the extremities and that's that. Not only is that inaccurate, but I really believe that this metaphor tends to promote partisanship and stifle substantive policy discussion. A real policy dialogue is founded on common ground, and it is much easier to find common ground with other parties when you visualize policy as existing on many dimensions rather than as a point on a line. And it trivializes everything. Somehow Joe Lieberman becomes a moderate Democrat, when he's not moderate about anything. He is a zealous social conservative and an unrepentant fan of big and aggressive (and irresponsible) government (is it any surprise that he has had a love affair with this administration). But somehow, under our unidimensional view of politics, his two opposing extremisms cancel out to create a "moderate". Hmm.. This has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time..

Anyway, on to my main point.. I'd just like to hash out some of the territory here. Some of what you describe about presidential politics is, I think, referred to as the "equilibrium displacement" theory of voter power. Or as it has been referred to in two of my classes it has come up in, the hot dog vendors on the beach theory. Say you have a beach full of people, and two hot dog vendors trying to sell to them. Where do the hot dog vendors inevitably set up? Side by side at the median point of the locations of the beach-goers. That is, I believe, a Nash equilibrium (neither side can unilaterally improve his position). The only power of any individual on the beach is to switch to the other side of median point. The median will shift one person over.

That is really the traditional view of American presidential politics. I think there are some real problems with that model, but to the degree that you subscribe to it, perhaps there is some sense in which the political spectrum is linear. No matter how many dimensions there are to issues, the positions will boil down to the two hot dog vendors and you can define a line that runs through the two points. Of course, I don't think this model properly accounts for a) voter turnout (and not so much strategic voter turnout (i.e. your Shotgun News story) as much as general voter turnout issues) and b) that there is a fairly broad range of "acceptable" policy positions beyond which non-policy issues (the charismatic frontman, the TV commercials, gamesmanship, etc.) are more significant.

The Shotgun News thing raises another issue: strength of preference/logrolling. If owning an AK-47 is worth 25 points of utility to you, having low taxes is worth 10 points of utility, and having high steel tariffs is worth 5 points (and those are the only three policy questions in the election), clearly you're going to be willing to compromise on taxes and tariffs in order to have the gun policy you want. And I don't think that is inherently problematic. People have varying strengths of interests and should be able to express those in voting preferences. I personally will overlook many policy differences in order to find candidates who support aggressive action towards clean and accountable government, campaign finance reform, and balanced budgets. Add in sane foreign policy and that's nearly my entire voter preference list. The single issue voter is only an extreme iteration of this.

Logrolling is problematic where people are logrolling for immediate financial gains. In general I'm referring to situations where commercial interests are engaged in the logrolling, and are using lobbyists and campaign contributions to do it. They may not care about any other policy except getting the earmark that delivers them a $5m contract, or an agency regulation that puts a competitor out of business. I think you have to distinguish that sort of logrolling (the car seat example) from the logrolling involved in individual voters deciding who to vote for (the shotgun example). The former, I agree, is a serious problem, but I have no objection to the latter.

I think that's about all I can handle for now. For next time: policy bundling in presidential elections. And I'll look into updating the general appearance of the blog, although it might not happen for a couple weeks...

edit: I should add, having now read Ryan's comment on Hank's post that my statements above assumed that the car seat law was a result of industry lobbying.

Fuck.

Sorry guys, I really meant to reference this where I mentioned it in the last post. Having forgotten to I thought I ought to put it here so you wouldn't have to go back a page to find it (assuming you wanted to listen to it).

Why No One Likes U.S. Presidential Candidates

Joe's post about good and bad presidential candidates (if you find this intro irrelevant refer to the final section of this post: Hank 5/19/06) inspired me to put down a few ideas I've been refining at work: since my job requires no thought I have plenty of time to hone my thoughts about other things all day long.

The focus of my criticisms will be, largely, the two party system, but these criticisms are nested within an overall criticism of any democracy that has a government as powerful as ours is.

As for that general criticism it is this: from amongst the infinite number of possible policies imaginable, a central government can only actually implement one policy. To put this another way, a government cannot simultaneously enforce contradictory rules. The point of this is that with regard to any particular issue the public will almost certainly embrace a wider set of potential policies than the government can actually implement (i.e. one). In some cases the people are fairly close to unity in their opinion. Very few people, for instance, would oppose laws condemning and punishing murder. There will, of course, be a diversity of opinion as to what punishment for murder ought to entail, or even what precisely constitutes murder, but at least we can come to nearly universal agreement with regard to the central issue. Questions as to how industry standards should be set, how transfer payments should be structured, and what our foreign policy should consist of are much more contentious. With regard to these more divisive issues we might expect opinions to be distributed much more widely along the spectrum, or more properly, within the space, of possible opinion. When our government passes legislation relating to these issues, which, as stated above, necessarily represents a single opinospatial point, we should not be at all surprised that most people find it at least partially dissatisfactory.

So the problem we're looking at is that, when we vote for a presidential candidate, we are forced to choose between two points of view that holistically combine individual opinions on every possible issue addressable. Even when faced with a single issue this a or b approach is clearly unsatisfactory. What color would you like your car to be? Black or yellow? What would you like for dinner tonight? Ham or turkey? Looked at from this perspective, the absurdity of voting upon such a vast complex of issues by choosing 'a or b' becomes perfectly clear. Imagine you were looking to buy a house and the entire market was just house a or house b. "Well, I did want the bathroom walls to be blue, and these are a sort of bluish green, and house b has pink walls in the bathroom. I certainly don't want that, hmmm…" You might want the deck but that means that you have to accept the brass fixtures, the smaller yard, the garish exterior lights, etc. Surely you see what I'm saying. The fact is that the decision that we make when we vote for a political party in fact conglomerates a vastly greater number of choices than those you would make in designing and decorating a home (and, in fact, a larger percentage of your income is devoted to the outcome of these decisions).

This, I think, highlights one of the truly bizarre peculiarities of our modern way of looking at politics. What I am talking about here is the concept of a political left and right. This universally pervasive idea implies a one-dimensional spectrum of political thought. All political thought, one might think, can be defined as being at some point on this line. There is a center, characterized as the midpoint between the Democrats and the Republicans. There is a point somewhere left of center, the Dems, and another just as far right of center, the GOP. Everyone, it would seem, then falls somewhere on this line. What this would appear to imply is that if I, for instance, take a harsher stance on criminal punishment than you do I must also favor a larger military, weaker social safety nets, stronger government interference in sexual activity, active corporatism, Christian lifestyles, etc. That is to say that, as I move along the spectrum, all of my values shift simultaneously to become either more Democratish or Republicany. I can be on the far left, by which we mean that I represent all the values of the democrats, only even more than they themselves. Now, I understand that few people take this analogy to be true in such an absolute sense, but I don't think that there is any doubt that these ideas, as I have elaborated them, pervade our thinking about our political environment.

The reality, as I explained earlier, is that political opinion exists in an infinitely multidimensional space, rather than on a one-dimensional line. Allow me to draw up a simplified example of what I am talking about. Let's imagine a three dimensional politospace (that being the number of spatial dimensions we inhabit, it's easy for us to visualize). Say on the x-axis (left to right) we have attitude toward gun control. At positive infinity (the extreme right) we have a policy in which we make weapons capable of annihilating the universe standard issue at birth; at negative infinity (the extreme left) we have a policy in which the shooting of a spitball results in lifelong confinement. Then on the y-axis (fore and aft) we have military combativeness increasing as we move forward and decreasing as we move abaft. Finally on the z-axis (up and down) let us plot attitudes toward the rights of the accused, up being less accommodating toward, and down being more protective toward, the rights of accused persons. Within this space we can plot the points representing the Democrats and the Republicans. The Democrats are somewhere leftward, rearward, and below the origin. The Republicans are somewhere rightward, in front of, and above the origin. We can plot a line connecting these two points and extending past them to infinity in either direction. This line represents the traditional 'left' 'right' spectrum. This spatial visualization clearly illustrates the problem that the linear representation presents. Virtually one hundred percent of the points within our space do not fall anywhere on the line we have drawn. In particular, six of the eight octants into which the planes of our axis divide this politospace are completely excluded from the line. These correspond to orientation combinations that do not bear the same proportional relationship between opinion types. Someone who, for instance, is in favor of militarism, does not support strong rights for accused persons, and who supports strict gun control legislation would fall in an octant that the line never enters and thus could not possibly be accurately represented as being 'right' or 'left' she is in fact some place perpendicular to the line, off in the neglected regions of politospace. When we take into account the fact that our real politospace is infinitely-dimensional rather than three-dimensional it becomes clear that not only will very few people coincide with the points that represent the two major parties but in fact very few will fall upon the line passing through these two points (or even in two the ifinants (my term for whatever it is 'quadrants' become when we are dealing with a space with two to the infinity power of them) through which this line travels) which we so commonly use as a proxy for all of politospace. In fact, there are many policy dimensions in which the two parties are identical. For a person such as myself who questions the necessity of the FDA and the Federal Reserve, there isn't even a lesser of two evils; the parties are both equally opposed to my position. Again we should not be surprised that most people feel poorly represented by the political status quo.

Now let's move on to what might be called the 'lesser of two evils' problem. We have already seen that virtually no one can be expected to be satisfied with positions of an individual party or candidate. So the inevitable problem is that in choosing between parties or candidates, be there two or twenty, we are inevitably forced to choose the one that most closely aligns with our average viewpoint. But why does what could conceivably be the 'better of many mediocre suitors' become the 'lesser of two evils'. Well the 'two' is fairly obviously the result of the 'wasted vote' phenomenon. In any electoral situation where there can be only one winner votes will gravitate to the candidates who have the strongest chance of actually winning. The partisans of weaker candidates will inevitably be absorbed into the coteries of the contenders one level up in the competitiveness hierarchy who most closely resemble their true favorites. This process of conglomeration appears to be inevitable. Our system settled into the two party solution quite rapidly and three-way races have remained exceptional. We see the same result in races for unique positions worldwide. Once we have arrived at the 'two' the "lesser of __ evils' also becomes quite easy to explain. Once we have two candidates who are assured to receive virtually one hundred percent of the votes they have a strong incentive to move to the center in an attempt to capture the lost votes that hang between their positions. That is, if a voter who is primarily concerned with a single issue--let's take gun control--will automatically vote for whichever of the two parties is closer to his position, the candidates will have no incentive to leave any space between their positions. If party A takes position A' and party B takes position (A' - d) [lets say that the negative direction is anti-control, so, in this case, party A is the gun control party] and all voters who lie in the negative direction from B will be guaranteed to vote for B and all those who lie on the positive side of A will vote for A,both parties have every incentive to reduce d to nigh on zero. This is because d represents the voters who, being neither (assuming an opinion axis where negative is represented by the leftward direction) to the left of B nor to the right of A, are not specifically guaranteed to vote for either party. Every step that one of these parties takes in the direction of its rival moves voters from the undecided d region into the guaranteed camp. Thus the natural equilibrium here is for the two parties to stand back-to-back, dead center, with an equal number of voters on either side.

The net result here is that the parties will never take extreme positions. This is because extremism necessarily costs them voters in the central region of the 'spectrum'. Thus we get the lesser of two evils. I read an enlightening editorial perspective on this issue in the Shotgun News (a firearm sales publication printed on my press at work). The author observed that if second amendment advocates really wanted to get the legislators to actively support their position (rather than just taking the least substantial position that would make them superior to their opponents in this regard) they must be prepared to withhold their votes, even from a lesser of two evils candidate, until he actively supported a position that they considered to be suitably stringent. That is, the author recognized that, in order to remove a candidate from a centrist position, constituents must not guarantee their vote to the lesser of two evils. They must represent their block as a carrot to be received only by a candidate who is willing to step decisively into their camp.

This last point leads naturally into another that is, probably, more important. We must recognize the power that a system such as I have described lends to a single-issue voter.

Imagine that, based on the principle that our gun-toting friend espoused, you decided to convene a policy advocacy group that would set a specific platform based on a core platform of issues, and that this group would promise its votes to whichever candidate best obeyed the mandates of your party platform. This would be just the sort of action that should gain you the most leverage in influencing real legislation. No guarantees, just performance based voting. Even if neither party worked well for you, you might vote just to punish the lesser of two evils for failing to reach out to you (this would be twice as effective as just not voting for him at all). The problem is that you would have to weight the issues in your platform. Necessarily some of your issues would be better addressed by one camp and some issues by the other. Whichever you choose to reward you will necessarily work contrary to a portion of your platform. Your prioritizing will, optimally, guide you to become a single-issue party. This is an essential feature of our current system. Given the vast diversity of issues addressed by our federal government most single-issue groups will be unopposed and as such will achieve easy victories. Such is the case with many industry advocates and other lobby groups. The single issue that they care about is unique to their area of concern and so there is no opposing platform. Thousands of pages of legislation are passed on behalf of such groups every year without the observation or concern of the general voting public.

A recent example of this sort of thing that came to my attention recently was a law passed in Wisconsin that requires children under the age of nine to use booster seats when riding in cars. In the article that I read explaining this law, it was mentioned that there were fifty children in this age group who had died (in the previous five years) who, it was presumed, would have survived had they been in booster seats. Now, given that there are five million residents in the state and that a conservative estimate would put one seventh of this population in this age group. Estimating, again conservatively that these children make two car trips per day (to and from school, day care, etc) over those five years we can further estimate that the increased risk of death (per trip) due to nonuse of a booster seat is one in fifty-million or less. This seems like a risk that could be left to the parents to assess. But I believe that there is a substantial single-issue safety lobby that argued in favor of this law and that, in the absence of a corresponding anti-safety lobby, they succeeded, even though I suspect that a significant majority of voters would oppose this legislation. This is an illustration of the power of the single-issue lobby. So long as there is no opposing group, legislators can guarantee themselves a block of votes at no cost to themselves. The issue is that, with thousands of pages of legislation being passed into law each year, voters cannot possibly monitor each bit of legislation. Under these circumstances a special interest group can enact legislation that benefits their own interests substantially while only negatively impacting the interests of the general voting population at large by a very small increment. Though each individual instance of this phenomenon may seem insignificant, over time, many such acts may be very detrimental to the interests of the general population. They simply do not have the wherewithal to combat so many diverse special interests on so many issues.

A corollary principle is that issues with regard to which there are two strong opposing single-issue groups will tend to dominate political discourse. The problem here is that these issues will eclipse others, which, though important, are supported only by groups with blurred (i.e. pluralistic) interests. I think this is the reason why such issues as abortion and gun control tend to dominate political discussions. It is political dynamics and not obscuritanist politicians attempting to mask more significant issues that lead to the preeminence of these issues. That is to say that I believe that the commonly acknowledged problem: that our political system obsesses over pointless and obscure issues, is a product of the actual positions of the voters, and that these positions, in turn, are the result of logical adjustments, by the voters, to the format of the system itself.

You may by now have guessed that my central position is that our federal government is making too many decisions at too great a level of complexity for the democratic system to function properly. The more numerous and involved these decisions become the more the possibility that they will closely mirror the desires of the people will be reduced. As the people come to believe that the state is the only avenue through which they can achieve their ends extremism becomes the norm and totalitarianism is the ultimate result. This is the inevitable fate of fascist and socialist political systems. One might argue that there are alternative approaches to structuring the people's suffrage, ways in which the two-party equilibrium can be disempowered. But the truth is that even if you have a ten party system the results do not change all that much. If you went in search of a career and everywhere you looked you found the same identical ten options I do not suppose that you would be well satisfied. Again I would assert that the number of variables that you might adjust in pursuing a career do not exceed those that you encounter when you make political decisions in our current system.

You might suspect that it is not a casual coincidence that causes me to repeatedly compare the options that democratic election present with those of free market options such as the purchasing of a home or the selecting of a position of employment. This is precisely the contrast that I intend to highlight. Government is necessarily authoritarian (this is true by definition) and its decisions are necessarily unitary. As more and more decisions are shifted into the sphere of public authority the people will necessarily become less and less satisfied with the actuality of their circumstance. The paucity of individual choice will necessarily lead to increasing polarism of opinion and intergroup antagonism. These consequences are not even directly related to the natural benefits of the free-market relating to efficiency. They are merely the product of communal decision-making. Each decision making opportunity that we remove from the public sphere by allowing individuals to decide for themselves will result in increased national unity, increased efficiency, and increased specificity in our ability to influence those policies that yet remain in the public sector. Some of these decisions may even be appropriate to government but perhaps just not on the federal scale. That is, the smaller the group, the greater the commonality. Thus, if these decisions could be devolved to state and municipal government units, the likelihood of accord being achieved would be greatly increased. I think that this was a significant part of the objective that our founding fathers had in mind when they provided the limitations of the federal government (through the enumeration of powers).

So, I guess that's my perspective on the issue. I think that our government has become so powerful that passing one bit (here I mean a bit in the true digital sense) per person per biennium is just not sufficient to define a satisfactory course. It has become so powerful, in fact, that a sole dictator could not even satisfactorily control it. No one is in a better position to make the important decisions that our society requires than those who are in the thick of the decision-requiring event. The free market provides for just this sort of individual flexibility and this is its great virtue. This is why the term 'free' market is so important to understand (as opposed to the compulsion and coercion of the state).

I hope you'll pardon any coarseness or incongruity that occurs in the latter portion of this document. I wrote it in three parts separated by probably about two weeks apiece. So I had two opportunities to review the first portion, one to review the second, and I only reviewed most recent portion after writing it this very evening. As I'm sure you recognize it is easier to objectively review a piece of authorship after an intermission, but at this point I haven't the patience to wait another day. The intro may not make much sense but this is because it refers to a piece that Joe posted immediately prior to my beginning writing this, something that is at least a month out of date. Fortunately it has little bearing on the rest.

Since I'm posting I'll just throw in my bit about a couple other things.

I have been consistently reading the posts here though I may not always be leaving a comment. I will strive to leave more just to assure you of my presence.

I downloaded the Colbert speech from Joe's bittorrent link. Mama B has watched and enjoyed it. I thought it was decent though I thought John Stewart would have done a better job.

I want to recommend one more time that you guys check out the link that I left to the MIT talk on 'Winning the Oil End Game'. I watched it again today and it really is a good talk. He discusses how we can eliminate oil demand (through efficiency) much more cost effectively than we can increase energy supply. It is a pleasurable hour and a half to spend in exchange for becoming truly knowledgeable about our nation's energy future.

Oh yeah. And since I always make such long posts I might suggest that we change the colors of this page to dark print on a light page. I acknowledge that Joe is the host and that I am merely a minor commentator. I don't think that the current negative format is obstructive when we read a paragraph or two at a time. But when I make such large posts I feel guilty for making you guys read it like this. I honestly can't say what the impact is since I don't read my posts on the blog, but on Word where I work on them. So just let us know if you find the current format uncomfortable or not.

Thanks.

Hayden and the NSA

An update to my previous post. Indeed, House Republicans are not thrilled with the Hayden nomination. High-profile hearings on Hayden's time at the NSA are not what they'd prefer to have the nation focused on as the election season warms up. Unfortunately for them, the NSA domestic spying story just got a lot worse.

A roast long overdue

If Stephen Colbert suddenly goes missing, I wouldn't be surprised...

Politics and Religion

Andrew Sullivan at his best. I've become a big fan of Sullivan's blog. I disagree with him frequently, but always find his take interesting. He is also a prolific blogger, which makes his blog a good place to see what the latest buzz is.

Aggressively Pursuing the Two State Solution

I find it fascinating to read news reports about the Sharon/Olmert unilateral withdrawal plans. You just keep seeing quotes like this one from Olmert: "In the next few years, we will change Israel's character to ensure it will be a state with a solid Jewish majority living in defensible borders.." But no effort is made to contextualize what these statements mean. I suspect many readers (and maybe some of the reporters) are missing the subtext. Conservative Iraelis are growing increasingly fearful of the possibility of a one-state solution and the demographic timebomb it presents (as predicted here a couple years ago). Going forward Israel can be any two, but not all three of the following:

1) Democratic
2) a Jewish State
3) inclusive of the occupied territories

Olmert is making every effort to secure (1) and (2) (i.e. the "Jewish majority" and "defensible borders") and is trying to dump (3) just as fast as he possibly can (although he intends to cherry-pick some of the better Israeli settlements and appropriate them for Israel).

What Are They Thinking?

It appears that the Bush administration is poised to nominate NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden to replace Porter Goss at the CIA. Hayden, of course, presided over the illegal NSA wiretap program. The wiretap program that Democrats wanted to see investigated by Congress and that Russ Feingold tried to censure the President over. And the administration wants to put Hayden through confirmation hearings. In an election year.. Good on them. We needed a more pubic airing of the wiretap program, and now we're going to get one. The Senate may actually confirm the guy, as only a third of senators actually have to face the voters in November, but here's guessing that House Republicans are not going to be happy..

Whipping Up a Frenzy

This is a brief follow-up to my point on threatening Iran. Mark Bowden (of whom I'm a big fan) has a NYT column how the Iranian conservatives are using the nuclear weapons conflict to generate support and stifle dissent. And we've played right into their hand...

Controlling Military Spending (Sort Of)

While it would be nice to see some actual cuts in military spending, CSM is covering a report from the Task Force on a Unified Security Budget that recommends redirecting $62b in military spending from Cold War-based weapons programs to items more relevant to dealing with terrorism (including money for first responders and foreign relations). These are good recommendations and perhaps a first step to getting some rein on military spending.

Winning the Oil End Game

I just watched this lecture at MIT about using existing technology to end our dependence on oil. My expectations weren't that high going into it, but it turned out to be really interesting. If you're interested in the topic I think that it is well worth taking the time to listen to this.

Democracy in Iraq and Nigeria

So I was reading this article about Nigeria in the Atlantic (thanks, Ryan!) and I came across a throw-away line in which the author, Jeffrey Tayler, makes a very interesting assertion: "In Nigeria, where one generally votes for one's religious or ethnic brethren, democracy has deepened divisions rather than healed them." I think he is pretty much on the money, and it says a lot about why election after election has not helped Iraq achieve a functional government. When people feel insecure (and not insecure as in "does my hair look ok", but insecure as in "I don't know if I'll be dragged into the street and shot by thugs today"), a clan mentality tends to ensue. If the fundamental conflict in Iraq (and Nigeria) is one between clans, having elections (where everyone votes for a representative from their own clan) buys you nothing. It really is problematic for democracy in many of these cobbled together former colonial holdings. Democracy does not necessarily require an ethnically and religiously homogeneous society, but it does demand one where people don't identify themselves solely by those traits (someone send a memo to the religious right).

What You See/What You Read

What you see: Stephen Colbert hammering Bush and the Washington establishment as Bush smolders and the audience watches in awkward silence. What you read: George Bush light-heartedly mocks himself, is happy to be there. Oh and Stephen Colbert showed up too.. (The Post's similar account.) Blogs have gone gaga over Colbert's performance, but the mainstream media has hardly a word to say about it. It says everything about why blogs have invaded the turf of the regular media. The two-presidents thing was cute, but it was obviously not the compelling story of this event. I don't know who was ballsier, Colbert (who turned and looked Bush in the eye as he glibly delivered some of his harshest lines) or Mark Smith, the president of AP Radio, who invited Colbert to appear.

The Economist

Was just reading this series of articles on The Economist and thought, naturally enough about TBWJ. Though for a bunch of young tech savvy gentlemen such as yourselves the contents may not be shocking, it is a good bit of writing about the new media.

As long as I am linking to The Economist I think I will advertise a couple of other bits of their content there. Not all of their articles are freely available but enough are to make it well worth a weekly visit in my opinion (and they occasionally give you the option of watching an add in exchange for a day pass).

I thought this one was fairly good with regard to the current position of the Democratic Party. Though I have been intending to post a piece with my opinion as to why both of the parties suck so much and why the American people have become so polarized.

Another sweet Economist link is here. It's the original edition of The Economist from 1843 and an excellent argument in favor of liberal trade policies.

One final link. A quote in the media related Economist article linked above referring to Blogs as "the toilet walls of the internet" reminded me of a site I discovered this week. Ancient Roman graffiti.

People Don't Like Being Threatened

It seems like I've written about this same issue many times before in the contexts of both Iran and Israel-Palestine. It is also largely applicable to Iraq. People in a country (or in any other context, for example a family) may have their differences. They may not like each other. They may want to see change. But you do not capitalize on those differences by threatening them. The only thing that will do is bring them together in unity against you. Of all the stupid things I've heard and read about the possibility of military action against Iran, the most irritatingly stupid has been the oft-repeated idea that the young people in Iran don't like the conservative clergy who run the country and will therefore welcome an invasion or, in the face of Western pressure, will overthrow the government. My god, have we not heard this before?

The Iranian clergy had real reason to worry about their future position after the 1998 election, and consequently they allowed some moderation in policies that they otherwise would not have. Our constant belligerence towards Iran since 2001 has put an end to that and has seen a moderate president Khatami replaced by an extremist Ahmadinejad, and talks of reform replaced by talks of nuclear weapons.

When Khatami won the 1998 election, the Clinton administration, after much deliberation, decided that the proper response was to do nothing. Any action taken in support of the reformists would only have served to taint them with the appearance of Western influence. It was a fight that belonged to the Iranian people, and one where the side we favored had a good chance of success. Patience was the proper course.

That opportunity for internal reform in Iran has now been squandered, and reformists will need years to recover. I can't say whether we can afford to wait years for them. But I can say with some confidence that we can choose to either maintain an aggressive posture (as is the present course) or hope for internal reform in Iran. There is no option that will allow both. We are rallying reformists and conservatives alike to the flag. If we back off and hope for reform, there is no guarantee that Iran won't get the bomb. In fact, Iran probably will. But if they really liberalize, and I think they might, even with the bomb, that is a far better outcome and a more permanent solution than will ever be achieved through an aggressive approach.

Glad We Got to the Bottom of That

You can all rest easy now. After months of investigation into the story that the CIA had secret overseas prisons where prisoners were being held incommunicado and possibly subject to torture, we've finally gotten to the bottom of this story. The CIA agent who leaked this information has been found and fired by the CIA. No word on whether the agent will be subject to further legal action. Hallelujah, go USA! Now you'll have to pardon me while I go sick up.

Was Brent Scowcroft This Cool When He Was In Office?

Because man, oh man he looks like a genius now. The idea that we should have a consistent policy on nuclear power rather than picking favorites and expecting every other country to jump on board with our judgments only seems obvious if you don't follow the news in the U.S., because here that concept is downright fricken revolutionary. And the idea we should try find common ground with the Security Council nations and attempt to defuse the situation instead of ratcheting up tension? Mindboggling. Where does this guy come up with it?

Don't Be Stupid (Again)

James Fallows had another great article in The Atlantic, this time on potential military action against Iran. It's short and to the point, and, I think, well-argued. The bit about oil leverage was insightful, particularly in explaining the reluctance of the EU to push for strong sanctions.

McCain Madness

Just wanted to comment a little on all the John McCain discussion going around (inspired mostly by Howard Kurtz's obsession with covering it blow-by-blow in his Media Notes). I caught the interview with him on the Daily Show a couple weeks ago when McCain was going to speak at Liberty U. and Stewart told McCain that he was killing him. It was possibly the most absurd interview I've ever seen. I've been a huge McCain fan for a long time, and I still think he does a lot of good things in the Senate, outside the spotlight, that people tend to overlook (see my Lobbying Reform post of March 30), and I was really quite tolerant of his whoring himself to the Bush campaign in '04 as a matter of political necessity. I don't necessarily want to jump on the anti-McCain bandwagon, because I feel like a lot of it is sour grapes by people who never liked him and were just looking for a good excuse to vent. But I have to say he's coming awfully close to losing me, and if he keeps pushing for evangelical Christian support, he'll do just that. McCain has fought so hard and so long to maintain his integrity, I really can't express how disappointing it is to see him sell his soul now...

Fiat Currency, Dollar Dominance, and the War on Terror

Texas congressman Ron Paul attempts to tie all the pieces together (and I do mean ALL the pieces). It's bit on the sketchy side, but there could be something to it... If nothing else, there's probably a top-selling novel in it.

Sidenote: I love this blog (the source of this link).

Spare Us From Electable Candidates

So Kos is pumping some political consultant's early take on the '08 presidential election, and in particular the guy's 10-point guidelines for electoral success. Some of it manages to be non-stupid, but when I got to the last point I just about choked:

10. Winning is everything. And the only thing. As in 2004, Democrats want to win. Unlike 2004, they REALLY want to win. No candidate will secure the nomination whom they fear will lose to the Republican nominee. Electability is going to play a major role in 2008.

Didn't we go down this road already? I'm pretty sure we did, because David Brooks wrote this brilliant column on it two years ago (I think it was my favorite column of the election cycle). Now it must be acknowledged that our system encourages strategic voting. Certainly we've hashed that topic out in mind-numbing detail with Dave some time ago (the 'winner takes all vs. coalition government' argument). But this is just ridiculous.

As Brooks rightly notes, what we get is a bunch of Iowa liberals trying to predict who Palm Beach independents want to vote for. This would be strategic if their analysis wasn't so stultifyingly stupid. Invariably this leads to lots of primary voters watching TV and listening to pundits spewing out the breathtakingly idiotic conventional wisdom to find out who is "electable". But the TV pundits are watching the voters who are watching them (and are too stupid to find their way out of a paper bag on top of it). As Brooks again astutely points out, it's a gigantic post-modern circle-jerk, culminating in someone winning in Iowa and being anointed with the ultimate mark of electability, that of having just won an election. At this point the rest is perfunctory. I'll make one guarantee: the Democrats will end up with a more electable candidate if they vote for the candidate they feel in their hearts is the best candidate than they will if they play the electability game. God save us from another "electable" nominee. I don't think the party could survive it...

Snakes on a Plane

I don't know what's funnier: the concept and background of this movie, or the FARK thread it inspired. It's a heartwarming story, really, one of those rare moments when corporate America really gets it:

In any event, "Snakes"-ophiles already were hard at work. Chris Rohan of Bethesda, Md., created an elaborate, R-rated audio trailer that lovingly mocks the title and movie. "It's a genius title," Rohan said. "It's so stupid it's great. It invites satire, but it's something you just love. It's something I can't explain. You either get it or you don't."

The audio bit uses a Jackson sound-alike shouting, "I want these mother snakes off the mother plane!" Soon, the growing legion of fans added their voices as they demanded that that phrase also appear in the movie.

Apparently, the studio got the hint. When Ellis assembled Jackson and others for the recent shoot, the filmmakers added more gore, more death, more nudity, more snakes and more death scenes. And they shot a scene where Jackson does utter the line that fans have demanded.

This is going to be brilliant. I can just feel it...

The Lobbying Reform Bill

The Senate's lobbying reform bill passed today. It's kind of a joke really, but at least it serves as a roll call of senators who prefer more than token gestures (i.e. the 8 who voted against the bill):

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)(go figure...)
Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC)
Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) (I don't know why Inhofe voted against..)
Senator John Kerry (D-MA)
Senator John McCain (R-AZ)
Senator Barak Obama (D-IL)

The few, the proud, the U.S. Senators who care about our federal government.

Why Do We Care About Dirty Bombs?

I mean I know they've been a part of the scare-tactic arsenal for some time now (the terrorists have dirty bombs! like omigod!!), but hasn't the whole dirty bomb concept been pretty well debunked by now? Apparently not. It seems our border security is being tested based on whether or not they can prevent a dirty bomb from entering the U.S. Honestly, do these people not know how to use wikipedia?

If You Could Lock a Man Up...

...for violating Godwin's Law, Donald Rumsfeld would spend the rest of his life in the joint.

I Swear I'm Not Getting My Hopes Up...

Not again. Americans really have no right to complain about the quality of their presidential candidates. It seems like every four years at least one truly good candidate steps up. And then is promptly and utterly destroyed...

We've Got 'Em on the Run!

I haven't blogged anything for a month, but I really couldn't pass this by. Donald Rumsfeld wrote a column for the Washington Post to let us all know that our opponents know they're losing in Iraq. It was annoying at first when he would try to convince everyone that up was down, then it came to be funny, but now it's just kind of pathetic. The more the situation (and popular opinion of it) changes the more this man's bullshit stays exactly the same. It will be interesting to see how Iraq plays out in the mid-term elections. It is rapidly becoming very unpopular, but the Democrats still seem to be (as seen with Feingold's censure effort) incredibly squeamish over anything relating to security. If they drop the ball on this again, I will be physically ill.

Me Get Woman, Me Rule Earth

I am quite disappointed with Phillip Longman's article The Return of Patriarchy in the March/April 2006 issue of Foreign Policy. The main thrust of his article is that conservative patriarchies are on the rise because individuals in such family structures tend to propagate. In contrast, liberals are having fewer children, thus putting their viewpoints and belief systems in decline. I would like to discuss some points specifically:

1. "Fearful of a future in which the elderly outnumber the young, many governments are doing whatever they can to encourage people to have children."

This is not a critique of the article so much as the governments involved. Underlying the worry of falling fertility rates is the real problem: that each generation does not fund its own retirement. So long as this is the case, there will always be imbalances. The modern population should be allowed to find its new equilibrium, especially if it is declining. On a systems level, we tax the earth enough as it is. Why should we be promoting higher fertility when we don't truly need it? Let's fix the underlying problem.

2. "Indeed, falling fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Why then did humans not become extinct long ago? The short answer is patriarchy."

Longman gives little evidence of recurring drops in fertility and even less evidence that patriarchy is what enabled humans to avoid extinction. I think the shortest answer here is sexual drive. Beyond that, it is likely that maternal behavior is the strongest factor in the survival of our species. This behavior is extremely potent and has genetic, neurobiological underpinnings. In other words, it is not simply learned.

3. Longman's main (if only) piece of evidence of his hypothesis is that states that voted for Bush in 2004 had a 12% higher fertility rate than Kerry states. What exactly does this mean? We don't know the belief compositions of these states, nor do we know whether liberals or conservatives (or somebody else) in these states are procreating more than others.

4. Let's assume for the moment that conservatives really are procreating more. Does this mean that an entire population will shift attitudes or beliefs? Of course not. Longman makes the assumption that the only way to spread one's beliefs is through genetic legacy (or perhaps familial legacy). His argument relies on the assumption that, by not having children, an individual's beliefs or attitudes simply die out. In contrast, I propose that those individuals who do not have children have all the more resources and time to spread their beliefs and attitudes throughout the world. My point is that his assumptions are far too simple for a system as complicated as culture.

5. "But as long as the patriarchal system avoids succumbing to these threats, it will produce a greater quantity of children, and arguably children of higher quality, than do societies organized by other principles, which is all that evolution cares about."

Evolution? I think it is a stretch to say that patriarchy is still under any selective pressure of evolution, as he is suggesting here. If he is referring to a sort of social evolution, then I will give him some leeway.

6. "Advanced societies are growing more patriarchal, whether they like it or not."

After reading the entire article, I have failed to see any good evidence for this. Perhaps one of you out there will see more.

Note that I have not taken any ideological position in these critiques. Rather, I think Mr. Longman has written a piece that appears to be more sensation-driven than logic- or data-driven. It is an interesting hypothesis, but with little to back it up, and with no consideration of plausible alternatives, it is just another man's opinion.

Peer Review Reviewed

As long as I have managed to log onto blogger I thought I ought to throw in a link to this article about the flaws of peer review. http://www.the-scientist.com/2006/2/1/26/1/. I am, as you know, skeptical of the quality of work that passes as scientific these days and I find that this article fits comfortingly into my way looking at these things.

I really do think that the system of peer review is seriously flawed. I think one of the central ways in which it is flawed is a result of the efforts that universities have made to quantify or make measurable their 'productivity'. The things that universities are intended to produce, like useful knowledge an educated populace and a thriving culture are very easy to observe subjectively but very difficult to observe 'scientifically'. The way that many universities have attempted to solve this problem is by making peer reviewed articles the ultimate measure of accomplishment. The result of this focus is that academic workers are forced to literally spam the journals with endless waves of content in order to attempt to drive up their stats. This flood of papers, most of them of little interest or significance, breaks down the whole system. People do not have the time to read the articles being published because there are so many. Reviewers cannot be overly critical lest their own careers be jeopardized by overly stringent reviewers (a sort of grade inflation one might say). There are so many papers to be reviewed and the people who are supposed to be reviewing them are so busy trying rattle off papers themselves that it is not at all surprising that so much junk flows through the system. Nor is it surprising that it is so difficult for those with truly worthy ideas to be heard amongst all the noise (the whole point of journals in the first place).

What is perhaps more troubling is how this system reflects on the university system as a whole. Just examining the way the journals ideally function raises some serious questions. Researchers, funded by the public, produce papers, supposedly in the interest of public knowledge, which are then reviewed by other researchers, also funded by the public, so that they can then become the property of journals that then charge the public institutions at which these researchers work for access to the very papers they paid to create. Astonishingly enough, it is the very universities, who appear to be exploited by this process, that lend the journals the legitimacy they then turn around and pay for. What particularly bothers me is that, not only are the universities paying journals for doing virtually nothing but they are compromising their fundamental purpose by allowing the products of their researchers to be locked away from the eyes of the public whom they purport to serve.

In the interest of brevity I will close my comments here by praising the people at MIT for their success in recognizing what their institution's fundamental purpose is. The founders of our universities, whose goal it was to promote the growth and dissemination of knowledge and culture, would have embraced the internet as the ideal tool for the job. If the modern leaders of our universities paid anything more than lip service to these ideals they would provide every bit of information that they possibly could to the public through the internet. This is what MIT is doing and I cannot praise them highly enough for their efforts.

Appropriately, I think, I will sign off with a link to a lecture about this very subject on the MITWorld Distributed Intelligence server (I came across it (it is one among several that I have listened to there on related topics) while searching for a different lecture that I thought was particularly relevant to my topic but which I have thus far failed to locate).

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/72/

The Decline of Dollar Hegemony

Just came across a link to this speech about Dollar Hegemony (http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2006/cr021506.htm). It lacks some of the more nuanced and subtle points, but the fact that it was delivered before the house of representatives pleases me. I do recall having read another speech on the same topic by Ron Paul in the past. You may also have seen it.

It is a shame that addressing the halls of congress is now merely a way of having one's sentiment officially entered into the record. If the house of representatives were actually a place of argument and debate something like this might spark a meaningful discussion about a pressing issue facing our nation. As things are, it will only serve as a testament to Mr. Paul's prescience after more serious problems arise.

Jared Diamond and Ishmael

I recently happened across this article on agriculture that Jared Diamond wrote in 1987. Had I seen it earlier I could have avoided wasting several hours reading Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. It basically says the same thing in a sliver of the space without being as awkwardly heavy-handed and pedantic.

Re: Putting Numbers on Surveillance

I think generally that the amount of tortured logic we've seen from this administration in their legal justifications for a lot of things is fairly astounding. This definition of surveillance is par for the course. Respect for the law is obviously a foreign concept to these folks. It seems more like a game to them. If you want to read a great legal analysis of the NSA flap, a bunch of well-known legal academics and former high-level legal officials have written a very thorough and detailed piece for the New York Book Review.

The Promise of Nuclear Energy

For a country that is "addicted to oil", there is surprisingly little discussion of a readily available and potentially safe form of energy: nuclear fission. Concerns about fission have been understandable, namely long-lived, hazardous waste products, the potential for use of nuclear waste in developing weapons for terrorists, and reactor safety.

In the recent article Scientific American: Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste [ ENERGY ], authors Hannum, Marsh, and Stanford detail a combination of new technologies that would essentially obviate these concerns. The approach involves a combination of fast nuclear reactors and pyrometallurgical processing (pyro). Currently, thermal nuclear reactors are typically used. These reactors use only about 5% of potential energy from nuclear fuel and create waste that requires some 10,000 years to decay to safe levels. Furthermore, the plutonium in the used fuel can be used to create nuclear weapons.

In contrast, fast reactors (already in use in Europe) burn a much greater percentage of the uranium/plutonium nuclear fuel, leading to a dramatic reduction in waste products. The real revolution will be pyro processing. A new technology, it involves reprocessing nuclear waste from thermal plants, separating unused nuclear fuel from waste products. The reprocessed fuel can then be used by fast reactors (not usable in the conventional thermal reactor). Unlike current reprocessing strategies, the reprocessed fuel is not suitable for nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the waste left over from this process requires only some 500 years to decay to safe levels, a dramatic reduction from current methods. Using this combination of technologies, some 99% of potential energy from nuclear fuel would be used.

In combining pyro with fast reactors, we would effectively have unlimited nuclear energy with minimal generation of waste products. Plutonium trafficking would be markedly reduced due to different processing methods. As far as safety is concerned, there are many ways to ensure a reactor is very safe (as an example, the authors detail building the whole reactor into the ground).

The authors estimate that, if we started now, the first such reactors combining these technologies would come online in 15 years. I am amazed that we haven't heard more discussion of this. I think there is a such a kneejerk negative reaction to the concept of nuclear power that politicians are afraid to approach it. Yet, this technology is already available and needs only to be expanded to a commercial scale.

Putting numbers on surveillance

The Washington Post has an article today that for the first time reveals the extent of the domestic surveillance program initiated by the NSA. In the past four years, some 5000 Americans have had "international" emails or phone calls intercepted. The administration claims that American lives have been saved because of this program, although there is no way to verify this. As it stands now, surveillance of purely domestic phone calls or emails still requires a warrant.

The article also provides some explanation as to why the administration circumvented FISA. Because this program has been of such low yield for information, it would easily be shown to be an unreasonable search given its unreliability. Hence, a violation of the 4th amendment.

In another insidious use of logic, NSA rules define surveillance as only occurring when a human examines surveillance data directly. The NSA is using more and more automated, computerized filtering systems that have the ability to scan large volumes of communications in the hopes of picking up information or patterns that could signal terrorist activity. Yet, only the hits that are actually examined by a human would be considered subject to possible legal protection.

This is a very slippery slope we are on. Intercepting terrorist communications is clearly important, but we can not allow it to come at the expense of speech and privacy. If it does, then the terrorists have already won. There needs to be an informed public debate about this, and it does not require divulging all details of current programs. If the government is listening in on me, I want to know about it.

The Economy: Full Steam Ahead

So... No jobs, no wages, but the economy is great. Hmm..

Be Careful What You Ask For

So Bill Kristol has been writing pretty consistently for a long time now about how the Bush administration needs to release all of the documents captured from Saddam. According to him these documents will vindicate all of the claims of serious and substantial ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda. Does Kristol seriously think the administration has not closely inspected the documents for this purpose? And does he think they wouldn't shout it to the world if they found something? Moreover, one wonders whether the administration's reticence to open this up to the public might have something to do with the fact that there is likely stuff in there about the Reagan administration and their serious and substantial ties to Saddam...

What in the hell is 'fellatiary'?

I never realized a linguistics blog could be so entertaining.

Taxation Without Representation?

This isn't cool. Withholding aid funds from Palestine I can see. But stealing their tax money? That I don't get. The fact that Israel collects Palestine's taxes and has control over what to do with the money argues strongly in favor of direct Palestinian representation in the Israeli government (i.e. the one-state solution). This, of course, is precisely what Sharon (and now Olmert) hoped to avoid through unilateral disengagement. (From the article: "[Olmert] declared that Israel must maintain a Jewish majority by relinquishing control over large parts of the West Bank and establishing clear boundaries...")

Playing Hardball With India

This is just a follow-up to the previous story about the US pressuring India over Iran. This report goes into a bit more depth on the relationship between the US and India vis a vis this nuclear treaty. Now, of course, Indian leaders are stuck with the problem of trying to look like they weren't cowed by the US if and when they do give in on this issue. I don't understand how this administration has failed to learn, after all this time, that when you want someone to alter their policy you need to leave room for them to change course gracefully. If you present it as a stark choice between the US and the people who voted them into office, they're not going to choose the US...

Honest Dialogue

I guess it's predictable, but I'm somewhat irked by all of the coverage of the Palestinian elections suggesting that this result somehow signals defeat for the US's policy of promoting democracy in the Middle East. I'm critical of the naivete of that policy for other reasons (primarily the fact that staging elections does not, by itself, make for a stable democratic government). But I don't see that criticism at play here. To the extent that we can successfully create democracy in the Middle East, I'm all for it. It's the implementation that I object to, not the objective. This was an exceptionally clean election, and one that signaled the importance of honest governance to the Palestinian people. Fatah symbolized the sort of corrupt and autocratic government that undermines democracy. Palestinians cleaned house on them, and now reports say that they are cleaning out their leadership. Palestine going forward will have two legitimate political parties, both of whom understand the importance of responsive, uncorrupt government to their voters, rather than deeply corrupt single-party rule. This is huge step forward for democracy in Palestine.

Moreover, I'm troubled by the assertion that because parties are elected in Middle Eastern nations that disfavor American policy (not just in Palestine; Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, and Saudi Arabia as well), this means democracy is bad. I've long thought that the dynamic that the US and Israel have tried to foster in Palestine is absurd. They have rejected talks with Hamas, with Arafat and Fatah, basically with anyone who could legitimately claim to represent the Palestinian people. Instead they would rather hand-pick a representative for Palestine (Abbas) and speak only with him. Indeed, they would frequently grow upset with Abbas for failing to bring the other Palestinians to heel. But how could he? He had no power over them, no democratic legitimacy. Fatah didn't respect him, Hamas didn't respect him, and I doubt the Palestinian people did either. How could he purport to speak on their behalf? How is it supposed to work that an agent in a negotiation is hand-picked by the adversaries of his principals? Under what theory of agency is this legitimate? It's absurd. Even if Israel had reached an agreement with Abbas, it could hardly have been expected to meaningfully bind the Palestinians.

The US and Israel may not like the actual positions of Palestinians, but they cannot hope to produce progress if they refuse to even address them. The important thing in these various elections is not that the party who favors American policy should win, but that the party who accurately represents the views of the voters should win. It's the voters we need to worry about and be engaged with, not politicians. Engaging in dialogue with politicians is important only to the extent that they are effective representatives of their constituents. If the general populace of the Middle East dislikes American policy, that is not a fact that can be swept under the rug based on models of governance. We have had many US-friendly dictators around the Middle East, and it has not solved our problems. In fact it has made them worse by allowing us to ignore legitimate complaints of the general populace. There needs to be honest dialogue, and that can only happen when there are political leaders who can truly represent the interests of their people. To the extent that elections like the one in Palestine produce that, we are all better off.

Nuclear Politics

India is apparently not very happy with the U.S. position on Iran's nuclear policy. I don't know a whole lot about South Asian politics (and apparently neither does the State Department), but I find this to be interesting. It seems that India and Iran are getting on pretty well. One suspects that China may also want to make friends with Iran, as Iran is in need of friends these days, and China could use some oil partners who aren't too far under the sway of the U.S. Russia has also had good relations with Iran, as they've been the ones setting up the Iranian nuclear program. If these guys are willing to back Iran at the U.N., that's a pretty formidable coalition, one that the U.S. and Europe may have a hard time overcoming. This could be very interesting.

Fatah Down in Flames

Holy crap. I always thought Hamas carried a lot of popular support from Palestinians, but I didn't anticipate this. The political fallout will be fascinating. As I've said in the past, I think this is probably for the best. Once Israel gets past its initial shock and revulsion, there will finally be an opportunity for negotiations with the potential for real results.

Update: The Newshour showed some lengthy clips of a Bush press conference where he discussed the election outcome. I hesitate to use the word "nuance" in the same sentence as President Bush, but I thought he did a good job. He put on pressure regarding the whole 'destruction of Israel' thing, but did not vilify Hamas more than necessary and strongly acknowledged the positive role of functional democracy with real competing parties in Palestine. He acknowledged that Hamas maybe could provide better domestic services and was not as corrupt as Fatah and did not give the impression that Palestinians were evil or stupid to elect them. I think that's about the right position to take. Western nations should continue to apply pressure against some of the more repulsive parts of the Hamas platform. But that should be balanced with an acknowledgment that they are the legitimate government that they have made positive contributions to Palestinian society and can continue to do so. Pressure is good. I think I could even get on board with a policy that there be no aid or negotiations until Hamas drops their charter demand for the destruction of Israel. I would probably draw the line, however, at demands that Hamas permanently renounce violence prior to negotiations. For one, I don't think it would happen. For another, I don't think it is fair unless Israel made the same pledge (which would obviously be problematic as regards their policing power in the occupied territories). Also it's not as if Fatah's renunciation of violence ever meant anything. It's no secret that they had a militant wing that continued to carry out attacks. I would hate to see the peace process derailed by a superficial pissing match of that sort. In any case, so far so good. Now we'll have to wait and see how the leadership structure shakes out for Hamas and how this affects the upcoming Israeli elections...

Best Music Video Ever?

Oh my. I'm not sure if that tops the Total Eclipse video, but it's close...

The Confirmation Process Confirms the Worst

I have paid some attention to the Alito hearings out of professional interest, and this weekend I tried to take a step back and think about what value the hearings have, if any, for the "weakest branch" and for our political system in general. I think the process does have value, but it is not for the reasons that many people might think at first.

First, it is hard to ignore the observation of Senator Arlen Specter that a nominee will answer only as many questions as he or she thinks is necessary to get confirmed. But is that bad? It should not be surprising to anyone that, when the same party controls the Presidency and the Congress, a nominee will be given more latitude and it is really his or her nomination to lose, rather than a burden to prove that the person reaches toward the mainstream. Even where the confirmation process is friendly, it still provides an opportunity to weed out nominees that have bad temperment or really bad judgment, and I think that is the best we can hope for. Judge Alito has good judgment and good temperment, therefore he will be confirmed.

But, some may say, he is really conservative and is bound to overturn important Supreme Court precedent that protects the fundamental rights of citizens. Well, if that were an important value to most people, and if it is true that Judge Alito would in fact work against these things, then he should never have gotten nominated in the first place. The failure, then, is not the confirmation process but the political process that allowed President Bush to appoint him.

Second, no one should accept for a minute that politics does not matter when it comes to judicial decisionmaking. That is to say, the Constitution was not written in such a way that allows individuals to determine the right answer every time, entirely divorced from value. What does "cruel and unusual" mean in an objective sense? "Unreasonable" searches and seizures? Who gets to decide whether the President is "faithfully" executing the laws, and what standard do you apply to decide that? Political leanings, upbringing, morays--these things will always come into play in deciding legal questions. Judges are humans, and the law (in the sense that we talk of it being decided in courtrooms, anyway) is a human creation.

I guess my overarching point is that liberal democrats should assume the worst as far as Judge Alito's conservative views, but it is a little too late to be worrying about that. The best we can hope for is a judge that is humble and willing to recognize that the law is not black and white, and is willing to take other people's views into account. And nothing I saw in the confirmation process gave me too much cause for concern on that score.

Will Judge Alito vote to overturn, or severely cutback on, Roe? Probably. Will he often find himself in agreement with Scalia and Thomas? Probably. But those things would not make him a bad judge, in my view. What matters most to me is that he does not believe the black robe gives him special access to the truth.

A Reporter's Peril

As a Christian Science Monitor junkie, I just wanted to point out the story of Jill Carroll, a reporter working for CSM in Iraq who has been abducted by insurgents. Her interpreter was killed.

A few days ago I was reading an article in the Atlantic that Ryan gave me written by one of their reporters, Nir Rosen, who has "spent sixteen months in postwar Iraq living mostly among ordinary Iraqis." I was somewhat amazed, at the time, that there were still foreign reporters living outside the green zone in Iraq. Given the poor quality of much of our news reporting I am all the more appreciative of the exceptional bravery and talent of reporters from outfits like CSM and The Atlantic. It takes balls of steel. I salute them all (and their Iraqi associates), and I hope and pray that Ms. Carroll makes it out safely.

p.s. Rosen's article, If America Left Iraq, is an excellent and informative read.

Econfusius say--

(1) Make your cheap products look bad, sell more; and
(2) Echoing Yogi Berra: No one goes to the mall immediately after Christmas anymore, because it's too crowded.

Tim Harford, a columnist for the Financial Times and author of the recently published book the The Undercover Economist, apparently seeking to ride the pop-econ wave of Freakonomics, had this article in yesterday's Slate.com explaining why Starbucks offers the "short" cappuccino for the person on a budget, but it doesn't want you to find out about it. Here's a hint at what Harford is getting at: he says its the same reason why airports make their ordinary lounge so damn uncomfortable.

And in this piece in FT, Harford attempts to explain that the post-holiday sales are really bad for everyone--and then compares government subsidies to post-holiday sales.

I agree with the theory Harford propounds/summarizes in the first article, although I have some difficulties with the contentions he makes in the second piece. To be sure, there are some instances in which the Government or some other third party "distorts" the market such that, as Harford puts it, "tremendous amounts of money are spent but the beneficiaries are scarcely better off, if at all." In my view, however, there are clearly instances where subsidies do in fact make people better off: to take a straightforward example, there are certain products (such as cars) the market just does not price well because they generate a positive or negative benefit (pollution, for instance) that is not fully captured by the buying or selling party. The government, through subsidies or taxes--the traditional economist views subsidies and taxes as the same--can adjust the price so that consumption more closely mirrors what one would expect if all the factors were taken into account. (Hank, if you are reading this, and you disagree, please throw your hat in the ring. I would love to read what you have to say on this.)

I also think it is a little shady to analogize post-holiday sales to government hand-outs. For one thing, the post-holiday slash-and-burn pricing could be explained by the fact that stores are trying to unload one season's products at any price above marginal value, or for that matter, below-marginal value, if the product's lifespan is truly limited.