Consequences of Lack of Faith

The philosopher J. David Velleman at Left2Right posted an essay today titled "people of faith". Janice Rogers Brown is reported to have said "These are perilous times for people of faith." Regarding this statement, Velleman muses in his post: "I cannot resist wondering what people mean by calling themselves 'people of faith'."

His musing defies belief (which I guess means that I have no "faith" that Velleman was serious when he wrote it). In English (especially American English), "usage is king" (as my sister, the linguist, is very fond of saying), and it simply cannot have escaped David Velleman's perceptual abilities and great intellectual capacity to notice that a substantial majority of Americans use the phrase 'people of faith' to mean those with faith in monotheism in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

So I assume that what Velleman really means (though it's hard with philosophers to know what the meaning of "meaning" is), that he wonders why, given that everybody has faith in something (and that something can, in his opinion, lead to a moral existence), people should care whether or not that the faith is a Judeo-Christian faith.

Why indeed? Well, perhaps that's because when people have veered away from Judeo-Christian beliefs in the past, really terrible things have happened: facism and communism to name a couple, each of which contributed to the wars and geno/politicides than killed many tens of millions of people. Indeed, an anthropologist once told me that the wars and geno/politicides of last century killed more people than had been previously killed by such conflicts since the beginning of time.

Further, I hypothesize that if the United States had not had strong Judeo-Christian beliefs in the early part of the last century, we would have ultimately embraced communism (it was, after all, a very powerful and compelling idea), and without the United States and other countries that stayed the course with us producing new technologies that the whole world, including the communist block, benefitted from (and survived because of them), the world would have been plunged into a new Dark Age, from which, judging by the economic and ecological disasters in the communist block such as Chernobyl, might have, by now, led to the extinction of homo sapiens (but don't worry, cockroaches would've survived, so life would've continued on).

I'm sure J. David Velleman is a profoundly moral person with the best intentions. But, it seems to me he is incorrectly projecting his own six sigma capabilities in the area of reasoning, intuition, belief, etc. onto a species (that'd be us homo sapiens) where such capabilities are extremely rare. In other words, if we all had his capabilities and hung around and studied philosophy all day, the world would be a better place.

But we don't.

A Few Holes in the Peer Review Process

Published papers, especially those presented at scientific conferences, are supposed to go through a rigorous peer review process. Unfortunately, there are a few holes in the process:

An MIT student has had a paper consisting of computer-generated gibberish accepted by technology conference WMSCI. The pretentious gathering bills itself as "an international forum where researchers and practitioners examine Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics key issues" [...]

Stribling's paper consisted of randomly generated buzzwords munged into complete English sentences by a madlib-like program, so they were grammatically correct but meaningless [...]

The paper, entitled Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy, and contained such wonderful claims as -

"We can disconfirm that expert systems can be made amphibious, highly-available, and linear-time."

And -

"One must understand our network configuration to grasp the genesis of our results. We ran a deployment on the NSA’s planetary-scale overlay network to disprove the mutually largescale behavior of exhaustive archetypes. First, we halved the effective optical drive space of our mobile telephones to better understand the median latency of our desktop machines. This step flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but is instrumental to our results."

You can probably guess the moral of the story: don't believe everything you read.

Science Oversold

All eyes have been on Kansas for the past few years, watching the fight between Creationist and Intelligent Design advocates on one side, and the mainstream scientific community (supporting evolution), on the other. An article from the Salt Lake Tribune describes the battle:

Classrooms ... have come under scrutiny - again - in Kansas' seesawing battle between left and right over the teaching of evolution.

The battle could heat up over the coming weeks, with Kansas' State Board of Education expected to revise its science standards in June.

In 1999, the board deleted most references to evolution in the standards, bringing international ridicule and wisecracks from the late-night comedians. Elections the next year made the board less conservative, resulting in the current standards describing evolution as a key concept for students to learn.

Last year's elections gave conservatives a majority again, 6-4. A subcommittee plans six days of hearings in May, and advocates of intelligent design plan to put nearly two dozen witnesses on the stand to critique evolution.

National and state science organizations plan to boycott the hearings, contending they are going to be rigged in favor of intelligent design.

I think that there are several very powerful emotional and conflicting issues here. First science has been oversold as being capable of explaining the Truth (with a capital 'T'). Evolution is a theory. I think that it is an excellent theory in that it logically and consistently provides a plausible explanation for the available empirical evidence. I look around at biological diversity in the world today and I say to myself, "yup, I could believe that evolution is responsible for part or all of it." What's important to understand is that I say "could believe" as opposed to "do believe". The reason I don't "believe" in evolution is that it isn't a belief system. It's a theory. There is no point in believing or having faith that evolution actually describes how the current biosphere came to be.

Instead of science being presented as "the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena", it has been presented as a belief system. It has been presented almost as a pseudo-religious faith. Scientists have acted like high priests issuing edicts about what everybody should believe to be the Truth. This arrogance has really annoyed a lot of people and the battle over evolution in Kansas is the resulting backlash.

A second problem is that parents get really tired of others deciding what their children should be taught. I have absolutely no patience for outsiders coming in and telling me what my children should be taught. Fortunately, we've been able to enroll our children in schools that provide learning environments that we enthusiastically endorse. But I can certainly understand the feelings of the parents in Kansas if they don't want their children taught Evolution, at least from the "belief system" perspective.

I'm saddened by this, because Evolution is a powerful concept in computer science (called genetic algorithms). We use it in our work in robotics. Biological evolution is a nice, intuitive way to introduce the concept. Too bad it was oversold.

Multi-culti collision with reality

Multiculturalism and cultural liberalism collide in a place called reality! British columnist John O'Sullivan presents some interesting observations and analysis in this article. The focus is on Britain but it has relevance for anywhere. Many people assume that being nearly infinitely tolerant is a good thing, but it is possible to be so openminded that your brains fall out. Here are several excerpts with emphasis mine.


…all change occurs at the margin. And these marginalized figures revealed in their clash that multiculturalism and liberal values are incompatible.

Multiculturalism is easy enough to grasp. It is the doctrine that all cultures are equal and must be given equal respect and protection by government. It was fueled by the arrival in Britain of immigrant groups with different religious cultures. And it has led to such social changes as rewriting British history and allowing strict Muslim dress in school.

Cultural liberalism is a larger and vaguer concept. Its essential meaning is that people should be helped to free themselves from irksome traditional moral customs and cultural restraints. And in the last 30 years it has affected a quiet revolution in Britain — in religion, family life, national identity, and moral values.

Public life is increasingly and aggressively secular.

Family life has been devalued: Fewer people get married; more get divorced; more children are born out of wedlock.

A combination of cultural liberalism and welfare has produced its own human sacrifice in the form of a growing underclass, victims of crime, and children with fewer opportunities because they are brought up in homes without two parents.

For a long time, it seemed that multiculturalism was simply one ingredient in cultural liberalism. But this was a delusion resting on three errors: First, it did not take into account that a nation, society, or community is held together by a common culture and common moral values — often values that its members are not conscious of holding until they are challenged. That common culture had already been subtly undermined by cultural liberalism; it was now directly assaulted by multiculturalism.

Second, it did not take into account that some of these cultures and multiculturalism itself were incompatible with liberalism. Multiculturalism holds that all cultures are equal; liberalism is the doctrine that all human beings have equal rights; so if a culture holds that some human beings, (e.g., women) have fewer rights than others, then liberalism has to confront that culture and reject the multiculturalism sheltering it.

And, third, liberals have failed to persuade these other cultures that the liberal theory of universal human rights is an entirely secular one posing no threat to their religion. Muslims in particular persist in seeing it as an expression of Christian civilization — which, historically, it is certainly is — and thus tainted at best.

Even from a narrow political viewpoint, it seems unrealistic of liberals to take on Muslims and Christians simultaneously. It also ignores the cultural truth that debates between secular liberals and Christians in the West are arguments within the family. They almost never involve first-order differences such as honor killings. They are debates in which it is possible to live with defeat.

Besides, how many divisions does secular liberalism have? Would a liberalism divorced entirely from religion and its own cultural heritage have the numbers and morale to resist what looks likely to be the proselytizing force of growing numbers of Muslims in Europe? Liberal multicultural Holland — which simply dithers in the face of Muslim terrorism — offers very little assurance here. Many Dutch liberals are now worrying that their multiculturalism has an ethical vacuum at its heart that ultimately disarms them in matters as necessary as punishing murder and protecting critics of Islam.


The newly elected Pope Benedict XVI, on the other hand, proclaims that Europe can resist multiculturalism and live with Islam without surrendering to it — but only if it recovers its own Christian traditions of moral behavior. Given that some of the fruits of Britain's cultural liberalism taste distinctly sour, secular liberals might be persuaded to examine this prospect sympathetically. They should be at least half-encouraged by the Pope's acceptance of the mutually stimulating role of religion and secular liberalism: "To this extent we must be grateful to secular society and the Enlightenment. It must remain a thorn in our side, as secular society must accept the (Christian) thorn in its side."


......
Pretty relevant and potent observations if you ask me!!

Now for Some Really Important News

Here's a problem you don't run into every day:

German toad experts are baffled by an acute outbreak of exploding toad syndrome which has totalled hundreds of the amphibians since the beginning of the month. The former inhabitants of a Hamburg pond - now chillingly renamed the "pond of death" - spontaneously swelled to enormous proportions before going bang, in the process propelling their entrails for up to a metre.

Thank heavens, the government took swift action to protect the public:

The authorities have moved swiftly to protect the public from the exploding toad menace. The pond is now closed and a biologist is on station every night between 2 and 3am, when toad explosions reach a peak.

So you can watch for exploding toads and shooting stars at the same time! Fortunately, the baffled German experts finally figured out what was causing the phenomenon:

... crows have been fingered as the culprits. Apparently the crow pecks a small hole in the toad to get at the liver. The toad begins to inflate itself - its normal defence mechanism - but because there is no separation between lung cavity and abdomen, the poor blighter keeps on expanding until it goes pop.

I just hate when that happens. Well, that's all of the important news for today. Tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel...

Perception is reality...unless it's just a big delusion

Perception can make for reality, but sometimes it's so divorced from reality that it is merely a delusion waiting to be exposed...

It took about 70 years for the socialist model to show itself as an irredeemable failure. I suspect that the social democracy/welfare state model will groan mightly under the pressure from global competition until it is viewed with less fondness. Our system in the U.S is really misperceived by many foreigners. This case is made by a German journalist, Olaf Gersemann, in his book
Cowboy Capitalism: European Myths, American Reality.
Book Description (on Amazon)
Europeans and many American pundits believe that while the U.S. economy may create more growth, Europeans have it better when it come to job security and other factors. Olaf Gersemann, a German reporter who came to America, found the reality quite different. He checked facts and found the market freedoms in America create a more flexible, adaptable and prosperous system then the declining welfare states of old Europe.

As an example, the Norwegians cling to some myths...

If you missed it, here is the entire article from The New York Times.

April 17, 2005
PERSPECTIVE
We're Rich, You're Not. End of Story.
By BRUCE BAWER

OSLO — THE received wisdom about economic life in the Nordic countries is easily summed up: people here are incomparably affluent, with all their needs met by an efficient welfare state. They believe it themselves. Yet the reality - as this Oslo-dwelling American can attest, and as some recent studies confirm - is not quite what it appears.

Even as the Scandinavian establishment peddles this dubious line, it serves up a picture of the United States as a nation divided, inequitably, among robber barons and wage slaves, not to mention armies of the homeless and unemployed. It does this to keep people believing that their social welfare system, financed by lofty income taxes, provides far more in the way of economic protections and amenities than the American system. Protections, yes -but some Norwegians might question the part about amenities.

In Oslo, library collections are woefully outdated, and public swimming pools are in desperate need of maintenance. News reports describe serious shortages of police officers and school supplies. When my mother-in-law went to an emergency room recently, the hospital was out of cough medicine. Drug addicts crowd downtown Oslo streets, as The Los Angeles Times recently reported, but applicants for methadone programs are put on a months-long waiting list.

In Norway, the standard line is that there must be some mistake, that such things simply should not happen in "the world's richest country." Why do Norwegians have such a wealthy self-image? Partly because, compared with their grandparents (who lived before the discovery of North Sea oil), they are rich. Few, however, question whether it really is the world's richest country.

After I moved here six years ago, I quickly noticed that Norwegians live more frugally than Americans do. They hang on to old appliances and furniture that we would throw out. And they drive around in wrecks. In 2003, when my partner and I took his teenage brother to New York - his first trip outside of Europe - he stared boggle-eyed at the cars in the Newark Airport parking lot, as mesmerized as Robin Williams in a New York grocery store in "Moscow on the Hudson."

One image in particular sticks in my mind. In a Norwegian language class, my teacher illustrated the meaning of the word matpakke - "packed lunch" - by reaching into her backpack and pulling out a hero sandwich wrapped in wax paper. It was her lunch. She held it up for all to see.

Yes, teachers are underpaid everywhere. But in Norway the matpakke is ubiquitous, from classroom to boardroom. In New York, an office worker might pop out at lunchtime to a deli; in Paris, she might enjoy quiche and a glass of wine at a brasserie. In Norway, she will sit at her desk with a sandwich from home.

It is not simply a matter of tradition, or a preference for a basic, nonmaterialistic life. Dining out is just too pricey in a country where teachers, for example, make about $50,000 a year before taxes. Even the humblest of meals - a large pizza delivered from Oslo's most popular pizza joint - will run from $34 to $48, including delivery fee and a 25 percent value added tax.

Not that groceries are cheap, either. Every weekend, armies of Norwegians drive to Sweden to stock up at supermarkets that are a bargain only by Norwegian standards. And this isn't a great solution, either, since gasoline (in this oil-exporting nation) costs more than $6 a gallon.

All this was illuminated last year in a study by a Swedish research organization, Timbro, which compared the gross domestic products of the 15 European Union members (before the 2004 expansion) with those of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia. (Norway, not being a member of the union, was not included.)

After adjusting the figures for the different purchasing powers of the dollar and euro, the only European country whose economic output per person was greater than the United States average was the tiny tax haven of Luxembourg, which ranked third, just behind Delaware and slightly ahead of Connecticut.

The next European country on the list was Ireland, down at 41st place out of 66; Sweden was 14th from the bottom (after Alabama), followed by Oklahoma, and then Britain, France, Finland, Germany and Italy. The bottom three spots on the list went to Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Alternatively, the study found, if the E.U. was treated as a single American state, it would rank fifth from the bottom, topping only Arkansas, Montana, West Virginia and Mississippi. In short, while Scandinavians are constantly told how much better they have it than Americans, Timbro's statistics suggest otherwise. So did a paper by a Swedish economics writer, Johan Norberg.

Contrasting "the American dream" with "the European daydream," Mr. Norberg described the difference: "Economic growth in the last 25 years has been 3 percent per annum in the U.S., compared to 2.2 percent in the E.U. That means that the American economy has almost doubled, whereas the E.U. economy has grown by slightly more than half. The purchasing power in the U.S. is $36,100 per capita, and in the E.U. $26,000 - and the gap is constantly widening."

The one detail in Timbro's study that didn't feel right to me was the placement of Scandinavian countries near the top of the list and Spain near the bottom. My own sense of things is that Spaniards live far better than Scandinavians. In Norwegian pubs, for example, anyone rich or insane enough to order, say, a gin and tonic is charged about $15 for a few teaspoons of gin at the bottom of a glass of tonic; in Spain, the drinks are dirt-cheap and the bartender will pour the gin up to the rim unless you say "stop."

In late March, another study, this one from KPMG, the international accounting and consulting firm, cast light on this paradox. It indicated that when disposable income was adjusted for cost of living, Scandinavians were the poorest people in Western Europe. Danes had the lowest adjusted income, Norwegians the second lowest, Swedes the third. Spain and Portugal, with two of Europe's least regulated economies, led the list.

Most recently, the Danish Ministry of Finance released a study comparing the income available for private consumption in 30 countries. Norway did somewhat better here than in the KPMG study, lagging behind most of Western Europe but at least beating out Ireland and Portugal.

The thrust, however, was to confirm Timbro's and Mr. Norberg's picture of American and European wealth. While the private-consumption figure for the United States was $32,900 per person, the countries of Western Europe (again excepting Luxembourg, at $29,450) ranged between $13,850 and $23,500, with Norway at $18,350.

Meanwhile, the references to Norway as "the world's richest country" keep on coming. An April 2 article in Dagsavisen, a major Oslo daily, asked: How is it that "in the world's richest country we're tearing down social services that were built up when Norway was much poorer?"

Obviously, this is one misconception that won't be put to rest by a measly think-tank study or two.

Bruce Bawer,a freelance writer based in Oslo, reports frequently on social and cultural issues.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS Help Back to Top

Yearning to be free!

This Michael Ledeen column highlights some key events not being played up in the press.

Not only are we participating in a global struggle against tyranny, but, if we look carefully enough, we can see the collapse of the conventional wisdom about the relationship between tyrannical rulers and their subjects.

Let's start with a thoughtful article in the April 19 Asia Times written by an Australian named Andrei Lankov ...."for the first time in some 50 years a large group of North Koreans, acting openly and in the presence of foreign journalists and camera crews, dared to challenge the representatives of authority..." Lankov believes that the demonstrations bespeak a significant erosion of the regime's ability to repress its subjects. That erosion has sapped the will of the soldiers and police, who are now "often ready to look the other way, especially when there is an opportunity for a small bribe."

Meanwhile, across the border in the People's Republic of China, there have been several demonstrations in recent months, ranging from peasant protests (shades of Mao!) in the hinterland (when Communist-party officials were caught stealing money that was supposed to go to dispossessed land owners) to worker's agitation in the big cities along the coast. Thomas Lifson, of American Thinker, suggests that the Chinese regime senses its own growing weakness. The regime has certainly intensified its repression of religious freedom, arresting the Catholic priest Zhao Kexun in Hebei Province, and continuing its mindless persecution of the Falun Gong. Luis Ramirez, the brilliant reporter of Voice of America, noted last fall that China was facing a most unexpected crisis: a shortage of qualified workers. And along with this manpower shortage, the brutal demographic consequences of the Communist-party's strict rule of "one child per couple" are beginning to take hold: The population is aging, the number of people retiring is higher than those entering the workforce, and retirement pension funds are drying up. Moreover, corruption is pandemic, and the recent National People's Congress provided the occasion for an anti-corruption campaign, with the usual showcase arrests and trials. But it is hard for a regime that claims sole authority to blame corruption on individual sinners.

As Janet Klinghoffer put it, "China is facing the same innovation roadblock the Soviets did." The Soviet Union could never match Western technological innovations, because Soviet citizens were never given the freedom to do so. Klinghoffer quotes a U.S.-embassy report from Beijing that suggests the Chinese are facing the same bleak future: "Recently a Chinese scholar remarked...that the lack of intellectual freedom and the extraordinary waste of resources severely handicap Chinese science. Both problems are rooted in the Communist Party's monopoly on power and in the socialist system...Nobody believes in Marxism, said the scholar, it is just a slogan..."

The importance of that freedom thang!!!

This is precisely the sort of thing we heard from Soviet citizens in the
years leading up to the great implosion of the Soviet Empire. The Russians had brilliant mathematicians, scientists, and engineers, but the rigidity and corruption of the system prevented them from translating their brilliance into high-quality products. The same is going on in China, with the same political results: The people are angry, and want fundamental change.

The same process is even further advanced in Iran, where near-constant demonstrations, protests, and even armed attacks against the institutions of the Islamic republic have raged.

The popular contempt for the regime is so blatant that the mullahs' usual pretense that all is well, has been openly discarded, and replaced with mounting repression. Like the North Koreans and Chinese, the Iranian leaders' greatest fear is that their own people will bring down the regime, and the mullahs have taken desperate action against the spread of ideas within the country.

Five hundred years ago Machiavelli insisted that tyranny is the most unstable form of government, and he warned that the most dangerous development for any tyrant was the contempt of his own people. That dramatic tipping point is now very close in China, Iran, and North Korea. All that is required to get there is a steady flow of the truth from outside their borders, guidance for those who undertake the struggle against the tyrants, and constant reminders — backed up with modest action — that we are with them.

Next Year in America

Yesterday was Passover, a very widely celebrated Jewish holiday. Indeed, many non-practicing Jews and even non-Jews end up participating in a Seder, the traditional Passover dinner during which the escape of the Jews from slavery in Egypt is described. The last line of the Seder service is "next year in Jerusalem", which, during the many centuries of oppression and persecution of the Jews, was a statement of hope. Now its meaning is more difficult to understand, since there are actually Jews in Jerusalem and the rest of us could go and have a Seder there if we really wanted to. I think David Cohen expresses nearly exactly my feelings when he wrote:

We are taught that there are two Jerusalems (the Hebrew word, "yerushalayim" is plural), the earthly city, shel mata, and the ideal or Heavenly city, shel ma'ala. I have no desire to live in the actual Jerusalem. Unlike previous generations of Jews, I am free both to leave my home and to live in Israel, but I am American through and through and know that any emigration would be my loss. (Some argue that the wish is simply to celebrate the Seder in Jerusalem, not to move permanently to Israel, but tourism as religious obligation has no appeal to me.)

Turning to the ideal Jerusalem, the prayer is often understood as a hope that we will find peace and justice next year. I am as much in favor of peace and justice as the next Jew (everywhere but on bumperstickers), but I find this understanding of the prayer as unsatisfying as the first. First, unlike most Jews of my acquaintance, I don't believe that peace and justice go hand in hand, but rather I believe that they are often at odds. Second, during the many centuries of Jewish persecution during which Israel was forbidden to us, this was a powerful prayer of physical redemption. Turning it into an anodyne wish that we could all just get along is offensive to me.

So, assuming for the sake of argument that I'm not satisfied to simply be a hypocrite, what will I mean when I say "next year in Jerusalem." It came to me a few years ago that I had subconsciously come to identify the United States with Jerusalem. I don't mean this as an argument that Americans are now G-d's chosen people (although I'm open to that argument) or that the US is shel ma'ala, the ideal city. But I do believe that the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and, most importantly, American life as we live it are now the best practical example to mankind of how life should be lived. Tonight, when I say L'shanah haba'ah biyerushalayim, I will be praying that next year, the world will be that much closer to living in freedom and prosperity, as Americans do.

There has never been a better time and place to be Jewish than now in the United States. When I say "next year in Jerusalem" I really mean "next year in America".

New Great Guys Blog Contributor

I've invited a new blogger to join Great Guys Weblog and I'd like to extend a hearty welcome to him. He and I run together and often have deep philosophical discussions while running (or at least they seem deep in my oxygen deprived brain state). Hopefully, we'll be able to recreate those conversations here, without being oxygen deprived.

Indeed, that would help increase the frequency of posting. I haven't been posting much because there isn't much going on in the world that's really catching my attention. The economy seems to be pulling back a little, but not enough that the data really shows it clearly. The middle east seems to be in a wait-and-see holding pattern. There are no elections coming up in the United States. There really haven't been any postings on other blogs that have stimulated me either. And I've been too lazy to finish some of the longer essays I've been working on (I'll get them done eventually).

No doubt all of this will change soon. Some new catastrophe will occur and I'll have something to write about, or our new contributor will stimulate an exchange. Then I'll get back to tapping the keys more frequently.

Advanced Economies Don't Manufacture Goods

Many people believe that advanced economies don't manufacture goods. It turns out that this belief is false. For example, consider the United States. First consider the growth in manufacturing in absolute terms. According to this paper, "U.S. manufacturing output has actually increased dramatically, more than eleven-fold from 1940 to 2000." Not bad for an advanced economy.

But how about manufacturing relative to the rest of the United States GDP? Consider the following:

"manufacturing's share of the U.S. economy, as measured by real GDP, has been stable since the late 1940s.... It is impressive for any private activity to maintain a stable share of GDP, since government spending has risen from about 20 percent of GDP in the early 1950s to 30 percent since the 1980s."

In other words, manufacturing output has actually increased relative to the non-government sectors of the economy during the last half century.

What country has the largest manufacturing output in the world? It's neck and neck between the United States and China, but considering that China has four times as many people, the United States is still doing pretty well.

What about manufacturing output per capita? The advanced economies, such as the United States, Japan, and Germany, have much higher manufacturing output per capita than less advanced economies such as China.

As can be seen from this and numerous other data, the belief that advanced economies don't manufacture is a completely inaccurate myth. Unfortunately that myth seems to be very widespread.

A Tale of Two Economists

Paul Krugman and Edward Prescott are two distinguished, world class, award winning economists. Krugman has several awards under his belt including the John Bates Clark Medal, "given biannually by the American Economic Association to the economist under 40 who has made the most important contributions to economics." Edward Prescott won the 2004 Nobel Prize for Economics (along with Finn E. Kydland) "for their contributions to dynamic macroeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles."

As far as I can tell, these two economists are diametrically opposed on just about every economic policy issue. For example, here are a few of the things Krugman has said regarding the Bush tax cuts:

"The astonishing political success of the antitax crusade has, more or less deliberately, set the United States up for a fiscal crisis."

The tax cuts are "unlikely to inspire any of the positive economic impacts touted by the Bush administration."

"And don't forget that President Bill Clinton's 1993 tax increase ushered in an economic boom."

There are "dire implications for Americans of 25-year crusade against taxes."

So I think it's fair to say that Krugman is thoroughly convinced that Bush's tax cuts were a truly terrible idea.

On the other hand, here are some of the things Edward Prescott has said regarding those same tax cuts:

"President Bush's tax rate cuts were 'pretty small' and really should have been bigger. "

"Lower tax rates provide increased incentives for people to work harder and lead to future economic growth."

"Why Americans work more than Europeans these days. ... Higher European tax rates, which kill the incentive to work harder and longer."

"Reagan's 1986 across-the-board cut ... lowered U.S. tax rates while collecting the same revenue."

"In the early '90s the economy was depressed by the tax increase in '93..."

So not only does Prescott think that the Bush tax cuts were an important step in the right direction, he also thinks that the tax cuts were not nearly big enough. My favorite contrast between the two economists is that Krugman thinks the '93 tax increase "ushered in an economic boom" while Prescott believes that "the economy was depressed by" that very same tax increase.

How about Social Security reform? Here's what Krugman thinks:

"I knew that the commission on Social Security reform appointed by George W. Bush would produce a slanted report, one designed to bully Congress into privatizing the system. But the draft report released last week is sheer, mean-spirited nonsense."

"Privatization dissipates a large fraction of workers' contributions on fees to investment companies. It leaves many retirees in poverty."

"Privatization will fatally undermine Social Security."

One "problem is 'transition costs', ... it's an enormous one."

"So the Bush administration wants to scrap a retirement system that works, and can be made financially sound for generations to come with modest reforms. Instead, it wants to buy into failure, emulating systems that, when tried elsewhere, have neither saved money nor protected the elderly from poverty."

Krugman is strongly against any privatization of Social Security.

On the other hand, Prescott thinks privatization of Social Security is a great opportunity:

"The benefits of such reform extend beyond the individual retirement accounts of U.S. citizens (although that would be reason enough for reform) they also accrue to the economy."

"Regarding labor supply, any system that taxes people when they are young and gives it back when they are old will have a negative impact on labor supply."

"Some politicians have vilified the idea of giving investment freedom to citizens, arguing that those citizens will be exposed to risks inherent in the market. But this is political scaremongering."

"There are no transition costs ... Re-labeling debt is not a cost."
"Further, about two dozen countries have reformed their state-run retirement programs, including Chile, Sweden, Australia, Peru, the U.K., Kazakhstan, China, Croatia and Poland. If citizens in these countries can handle individual savings accounts, especially citizens in countries without a history of financial freedom, then U.S. citizens should be equally adept."

Here again, Krugman and Prescott have absolutely opposite positions. As the last quote from each economist shows, they even point to the same evidence to support their opposite conclusions. Krugman looks at privatization schemes in other countries as evidence of why the United States should not privatize Social Security and Prescott cites foreign approaches as evidence as to why we should privatize Social Security.

This stark difference in viewpoints leads to several questions. Are one or both of these economists insane? Are they on drugs? Are the organizations that have awarded them their prizes in economics dysfunctional? Do they live in alternate universes? What gives?

The problem is that economic systems are so complex that it is usually impossible to prove or even show with any statistical confidence that various policies will have effects, that in total, are beneficial. Even the most simplified economic models of subjects such as taxation and entitlements have many degrees of freedom and there is simply nowhere near enough data to support multivariate statistical analysis of these models. Very simple and specific questions sometimes have clear answers based on analytical and empirical analysis. For example, everyone agrees that prices rise when demand increases but supply remains constant.

But even slightly more complicated questions lead to intense and unresolved debates. For example, does a higher effective wage make it more likely that a person will work longer hours? According to the older, more traditional view, the higher wage makes working additional hours more attractive, but it also makes leisure time more attractive since you have more money to spend during that leisure time. According to the traditional view these two incentives tend to more or less cancel each other out, causing little change, on average, in working habits due to changes in effective wages. However, as explained by Arnold Kling, a more modern theory

"re-casts the trade-off as between "market time" and "non-market time." In addition to TV and Bon-Bons, you spend some of your non-market time producing goods and services, such as home-improvement projects, meals cooked at home, housework, and child care. Thinking of the choice in those terms, an increase in your wage rate could have a significant effect on your labor supply. The higher your wage rate, the more it makes sense for you to "outsource" household chores. If I can earn enough in six hours of work to pay for someone else to do eight hours of household chores, then I can get more hours for TV and Bon-Bons by increasing my "market time." Working six more hours but spending eight fewer hours on household chores gives me a net saving of two hours."

So a fairly simple and fundamental question generates two competing theories which lead to totally different conclusions. Since tax policy directly affects effective wages (lower taxes mean higher effective wages), disagreement on this fundamental question completely changes the rest of the analysis of almost every important economic policy. And this is just one of many unresolved fundamental economic questions upon which economic policy is based.

The bottom line is that the experts are unable to answer some pretty basic questions, at least not with any precision, and without knowing the answers to those questions, policy recommendations are pretty much wild guesses. As a result, my preference, especially since I think the state of economy is actually very good, is to not change things too much or too quickly. Since we don't really know what the effects are of the changes that we might consider making, there's no reason to tamper with success.

Terri Schiavo

There are theoretically three choices regarding Terri Schiavo:

1. Actively terminate her life (injection to stop heart). In this case there would be no, or at least very brief, pain, even if she has the capability to feel pain.
2. Passively terminate her life (remove feeding tube). Starvation/dehydration is a horrible way to die if one can feel pain, basically torture.
3. Keep her alive. A miserable existence if she can feel anything.
   

(2) sounds just so awful to me that I can't support it. It feels morally wrong to me. Indeed, I hadn't contemplated death by starvation before, and if in her position, I say please don't do that to me! (1) and (3) are fine (well, not fine, but at least fathomable), but not (2)! If I'm in a permanent coma, you can remove a breathing tube, you can stop medication, you can sneak in to my room in the middle of the night and inject something lethal, but please don't starve me!

They didn't ask her if she'd mind being starved to death. I think it's a stretch to assume that she would've said yes.

Darwinian Paradox

What would Darwinism predict about the acceptance of Darwinism, given the fact that the vast majority of people on earth are religious and believe in a creation myth based on a deity? First, the definition of Darwinism, for the purposes of this post are taken from Wikipedia, and is limited to the description of a process which "requires the following schema:

1. Self-replication/Inheritance: Some number of entities must be capable of producing copies of themselves, and those copies must also be capable of reproduction. The new copies must inherit the traits of old ones. Sometimes the different variations are recombined in sexual reproduction.
2. Variation: There must be a range of different traits in the population of entities, and there must be a mechanism for introducing new variations into the population.
3. Selection: Inherited traits must somehow affect the ability of the entities to reproduce themselves, either by survival, or natural selection, or by ability to produce offspring by finding partners, or sexual selection."

In particular, this definition of Darwinism does not include any philosophical, sociological, or theological extensions that are sometimes (in my opinion wrongly) attributed to Darwinism.

Assuming Darwinism is an accurate description of biological evolution, then a reasonable hypothesis is that a trait that is very common in a population is evidence that the trait confers fitness on members of that population relative to natural selection. Since belief in a deity based creation myth is a very common trait in humans, it follows that such belief is likely to be advantageous in a Darwinian sense. In addition, in order to maintain belief in deity based creation myths, it may be necessary to have a natural resistance to ideas or theories that conflict with creation myths or offer alternate, natural explanations for parts of the creation process. Darwinism is possibly one such theory to which people might therefore have a natural resistance.

Thus, it is plausible that Darwinism predicts resistance to the acceptance of Darwinism.

More Great Productivity Numbers

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. business productivity rose more quickly in the fourth quarter than first thought, notching an unexpectedly brisk 2.1 percent annual rate, while the growth in labor costs was cut to a mild 1.3 percent pace, a government report showed on Thursday.

Productivity is the single most important component of GDP growth. It reflects innovation and knowledge and is at least partially sustainable for the very long term. Continued increases in productivity mitigates most other economic ills.

New York Times Pulls Head out of Sand...

...and is astonished:

Still, this has so far been a year of heartening surprises - each one remarkable in itself, and taken together truly astonishing. The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances. It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy at a time when few in the West thought it had any realistic chance.

In interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I was not much of a supporter of the Iraq invasion. Not because I was against the concept in principle, but because I thought the risk was awfully high. However, it's been obvious to me for many months that things have been going far better in the middle east than the New York Times has been reporting. Maybe they should find some journalists with some objectivity, rather than continuing to rely on their current staff, who seem to parrot anti-Bush vitriol regardless of what is actually happening in the world. There was no reason to suddenly become astonished.

Never Ending Good News

Economy Grows Better Than Expected:

The economy grew at a solid 3.8 percent annual rate in the final quarter of 2004 — stronger than previously estimated_ and an encouraging sign that the business expansion was firmly entrenched at the start of the new year. [...]

For all of 2004, the economy expanded by 4.4 percent, the best showing in five years. This annual estimate was the same as first reported last month. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, delivering the Fed's economic outlook to Congress last week, struck a fairly positive note about the economy's performance. "All told, the economy seems to have entered 2005 expanding at a reasonably good pace, with inflation and inflation expectations well anchored," he said.

On the other hand, other countries are having a little more trouble:

German unemployment rose to a postwar record in February as cold weather caused companies to lay off staff while labor-law changes swelled jobless registers, a member of the ruling Social Democratic Party said.

Not to mention:

France said Friday that its jobless rate reached 10 percent in January for the first time in five years...

I hope that those jobless aren't all immigrants from the mideast. That could be a seriously unstable situation.

Behavioral Conservatives

I just spent a couple of weeks in that most liberal of liberal European countries - The Netherlands. While the purpose of the trip was primarily business, I had the good fortune to spend some time with one of the guys I work with there and his family. I went to his house and hung out with him, his wife and their two kids. They consider themselves good liberal Europeans and classify Americans as being very right wing and conservative relative to themselves.

But I couldn't help noticing that their lifestyle was nearly identical to conservative Americans living in republican states. They live in a house, have two cars, one of which is a minivan. They have two kids, and though that is less than average for a conservative American family, it's by no means unusual. Their interactions with their kids didn't seem any different to me than what I observe here in the United States. They don't partake of any of the vices that The Netherlands if famous for.

Indeed, if an alien came down and observed this Dutch family and a conservative American one, the alien would be hard pressed to tell them apart. The only obvious differences are that this Dutch family was not religious and they didn't own any firearms (which are generally prohibited). They basically talk the liberal talk, but they don't really walk the liberal walk. So they may be ideological liberals, but they are behavioral conservatives.

I'm an "actions speak louder than words" kinda guy, so I find this very interesting. When I pointed it out to my Dutch friends, they were quite uncomfortable with the concept of being behavioral conservatives. They put a lot of thought into trying to come up with distinctions between themselves and conservative families in America. Religion and guns are about it.

Gay Marriage

I hadn't yet blogged on this particular topic because it simply doesn't matter all that much to me. Nonetheless, I've come to the conclusion that the government should get out of the marriage business, whether same-sex, heterosexual, etc. I think that these excerpts from a Reason article says it well:

Around 270 A.D.—according to one tradition, at least—St. Valentine, a Roman cleric, was imprisoned for his opposition to Emperor Claudius' decree that young men (his potential crop of soldiers) could no longer marry. Valentine performed their ceremonies anyway and was thrown in jail for his obstinacy. His belief was that marriage is too sacred a rite to relegate to the incompetence of state bureaucracy. And, on February 14, he was executed for that belief. [...]

As we approach the anniversary of Valentine's own rebellion and denial, shouldn't the nation that pioneered a popular government of the people, by the people, and for the people" be the one that finally stands to assert the pre-governmental primacy of matrimonial privacy?

It is time to privatize marriage. If the institution is really so sacred, it should lie beyond the withering hands of politicians and policy makers in Washington D.C. There should be no federal or state license that grants validity to love. There should be no state-run office that peers into our bedrooms and honeymoon suites. If the church thinks divorce and homosexuality are problematic, it should initiate the real dialogue to address these problems in-house rather than relying on state-sponsored coercion to affirm doctrinal beliefs. And if tax-codes and guardianships need some classification for couples, let's revise civil union standards to reflect those needs.

I fully realize that the devil's in the details regarding those tax-codes and guardianships, but nonetheless, it's a solution that eliminates the State supported discrimination against gay couples while allowing people to define and believe in marriage according to the mores of their community.

Don't Jump

Fewer Americans have died in the Iraq war than have died jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge (suicide) since it opened. Close down the bridge I say. It's clearly far too dangerous.

Laffing

Arthur Laffer, the "Father of Supply Side Economics", thinks things are great:

OK, let's take a look at what happened to marginal tax rates. The highest rate has gone from what -- 70 percent -- down to what, 35 percent? What's happened to inflation? What's happened to regulation restrictions? What's happened to America and the world? What's happened to the stock market? What's happened to everything you and I believe in? Do you remember what unemployment rates looked like back in 1979? Do you remember what the prime was when Ronald Reagan came into office on Jan. 20, 1981? It was 21 percent. [...]

When (Nobel Prize-winning economist) Bob Mundell and I sat there at the University of Chicago in 1967, '68 and '69, we dreamt of a world. That world is now. Can you imagine a world with no inflation? Everything that's happened. It's absolutely spectacular. I'm just so happy about what's happened to this world. [...]

If you looked at (House Minority Leader) Nancy Pelosi and you looked at (Senate Minority Leader) Harry Reid Wednesday night, they looked really, really uncomfortable. They were running everything in 1979. They had the president, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the Fed chairman. They had every damn position in the world. They had everything -- the states, the houses, the governors. It was a Fabian redistributionist nightmare. Now it's really beautiful. I'm an old man, and old men are supposed to be curmudgeons and hate the modern day and love the ancient. But the truth of the matter is, we've won.

I have to say that that's how it looks to me too.