Shake, Rattle, & Roll

It's been fun!

For those of us in San Diego, earthquakes are sort of like virtual reality motion simulator rides - except for the "virtual" and "simulator" parts. They're not strong enough to cause any damage or injury or even be particularly scary.

The big fault line that runs through Los Angeles splits about 60 miles north of here and goes around San Diego, both to the East and West. The latest earthquakes were on the Eastern (and larger) fork of the fault, about 110 miles from San Diego, in a very sparsely populated area of the Mexican and California deserts.

I'm on vacation for the next little bit, so blogging and commenting will be sporadic.

That's a rap!

As I've probably mentioned before on this blog, Hayek and Keynes were personal friends but intellectual rivals.

Video producer John Papola and economics professor Russ Roberts teamed up and did a nice job on this video, now over a million hits on youtube.


More information, lyrics and many relevant links here:

In Fear the Boom and Bust, John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great economists of the 20th century, come back to life to attend an economics conference on the economic crisis. Before the conference begins, and at the insistence of Lord Keynes, they go out for a night on the town and sing about why there's a "boom and bust" cycle in modern economies and good reason to fear it.

Glad to see more attention on Hayek.

More here on the totally relevant credit and real estate cycles which are the ultimate in booms and busts.

Lottery Democracy

William F. Buckley, Jr. once quipped, "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University." Given that Congress currently has an approval rating of a mere 14% (76% disapprove!), we can bet Mr. Buckley would prefer those 400 Bostonians to the current Congress as well. I know I would. I don't think I could feel less represented by our representatives than I do now.

Even if the system were working well, either a large minority or even a majority of people still wouldn't be well represented. If, for example, you're a Democrat living in a majority Republican district, it's very possible that you'll go your whole life without having a representative that has views similar to yours. The same goes, of course, for a Republican in a majority Democrat district.

So I think we should adopt a variant of Buckley's approach.

Instead of the first 400 names in the phone, let's have our representatives be chosen at random from the adult population. The selection process would be sort of like jury duty for a very long trial.

There are some details to be worked out, but I think it could be quite straight-forward. I would propose something like four-year terms with one-quarter of the representatives cycled in and out each year. I believe that we would want more representatives, perhaps five times as many, to provide better representation of a wider cross section of the population.

This approach has a huge number of advantages. No more disruptive and divisive elections for representatives. No more election fraud. Since there are no more campaigns to fund, it weakens the lobbyist and big money connections to the representatives. Representatives will have less conflict of interest between their career and representing their constituents since after their four-year term, it's time to go back home. More people will have a representative that reflects their beliefs, even those who are of minority political persuasions in their district. A wider range of skills from far more professions will be available when debating legislation: scientists, doctors, engineers, economists, etc.

Are there any downsides? I don't think so. At first I was thinking that there might be to many undesirable representatives, but given the crazy (Pelosi), stupid (Boxer), and unscrupulous (Dodd) politicians we have now, I don't think we'd do much worse. It would clearly be disruptive for those chosen to be representatives, but I'm sure insurance companies would come up with products to help them.

To start, I would only do this for the House of Representatives. I would keep everything else (Senate, etc.) the same.

The ancient Greeks did this sort of thing at one point and it worked reasonably well. There's no reason it wouldn't work for us.

Elections and Violence

In numerous old legends, prior to two armies engaging in battle, the two kings or a champion for each king would first fight in single combat. Based on the result of that combat between the two individuals, one side might retreat or otherwise sue for peace. An example of such a legend is the biblical story of David and Goliath, where David, who was essentially an unarmed child, slew Goliath, the largest, most powerful, and most skilled of the Philistine warriors. The Philistines were so freaked out by this turn of events that they beat a hasty retreat.

From one perspective, an election is similar to a single combat preceding such a battle. The basis is, of course, somewhat different. In this case, it's assumed that the larger army would win. The votes are counted, the "larger army" is identified, and the minority begrudgingly "surrenders" and allows the representative(s) from the "larger army" to rule them for a while. This approach is obviously less costly than having a total war every 4 years.

However, part of the reason that the minority allows themselves to be ruled by the majority, is that the majority implicitly and explicitly agrees that oppression of the minority is to be limited by tradition, institutions that have resulted from tradition, and the constitution. There's also the implicit assumption that the minority will be better off living under the rule of the majority as opposed to taking up arms and fighting.

If any of these implicit and explicit bounds on ruling are breached by the majority, the minority may be better off resorting to violence or any other approach that can make the lives and/or the lives of their families and communities better. Note that revenge is a significant component of making lives seem better.

With the passage of Obamacare, there are a significant number of angry people. There are claims of violence and threats of violence by those who oppose Obamacare against those who supported and passed it. This is not surprising and fits the above narrative perfectly. It's an inherently subjective analysis for each member of the minority to determine whether or not the majority has exceeded its bounds, so some people will be ready to resort to violence and subversion before others. Assuming the claims of threats and violence are substantiated and significant (a handful of such incidents is meaningless), we may be seeing the beginning of the minority moving towards violent confrontation.

There are many who are calling on Republicans/Conservatives/Libertarians to condemn the threats and violence.

Not me. I can't imagine why I would. It's part of the deal of ruling.

Obama...

...at least he makes the gravy trains run on time.

Health Care Reform Passed

Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn.

Minimum Insight

Whenever someone I know makes a statement to the effect that the minimum wage benefits the poor, I always ask, "if a minimum wage of $7.25/hour helps the poor, why not make the minimum wage be $1,000/hour and really help the poor?"

Nobody has ever been able to answer that question and stick to that answer with further questioning. Oh sure, some have said, "because who could afford to hire anybody for $1,000 per hour?" So, then I ask, "how about $500? No? $100? No? $50? No? $40? No? ... $10 ...". Somewhere in this string they promptly either change the subject, create and knock down straw men, get irate and insist that my questions are absurd and have no merit, or otherwise indicate through their behavior and speech that they know perfectly well that some people who are employable at a lower wage are never going to find work at $7.25 per hour.

In other words, pretty much everybody knows that minimum wage laws don't help the poor. In fact, they are currently devastating the young poor:

Obviously, I think that minimum wage laws are really a bad idea. However, it has now crossed the line, in my opinion, into severely immoral. The government is now telling a large class of people that they are not allowed to legally work. These people, who can't find jobs, are going to be adversely impacted their whole lives because they are unable to gain experience that would've helped them find better jobs later.

Happy Pi Day!

My older daughter (13) was aghast that it was Pi Day (3/14) and she didn't have any pie (she's eaten pie every Pi Day for the last few years). So she scoured the pantry and found enough ingredients to make her first pie (blackberry), pictured above.

It was delicious!

Happy Pi Day!

Truuuuust Meeeee!!!

Climate scientists are becoming concerned that the public no longer holds them in high esteem and no longer finds them trustworthy. It seems that the leaked University of East Anglia emails ("Cimategate") showing scientists in a less than stellar light coupled with numerous revelations of mistakes in the IPCC's reports has enraged much of the public, especially in Britain.

As a result, many scientists are trying to reach out to the public in order to restore that trust. An example is Dr. Judith Curry's essay that was posted on several skeptics blogs. Here's an excerpt:

Rebuilding trust with the public on the subject of climate research starts with Ralph Cicerone’s statement “Two aspects need urgent attention: the general practice of science and the personal behaviors of scientists.” Much has been written about the need for greater transparency, reforms to peer review, etc. and I am hopeful that the relevant institutions will respond appropriately. Investigations of misconduct are being conducted at the University of East Anglia and at Penn State. Here I would like to bring up some broader issues that will require substantial reflection by the institutions and also by individual scientists.

Climate research and its institutions have not yet adapted to its high policy relevance. How scientists can most effectively and appropriately engage with the policy process is a topic that has not been adequately discussed ... The interface between science and policy is a muddy issue, but it is very important that scientists have guidance in navigating the potential pitfalls. Improving this situation could help defuse the hostile environment that scientists involved in the public debate have to deal with, and would also help restore the public trust of climate scientists.

The problem is not so much that the scientists are untrustworthy (some are, some aren't just like all other humans), but rather that the system itself is untrustworthy. The interface between science and policy is not "muddy" at all. It's crystal clear that interfaces like that are ripe for corruption and distortion, and not at all amenable to seeking and finding truth.

I decided to write Dr. Curry an email to point that out:

Dear Dr. Curry,

I read your excellent post regarding "Rebuilding Trust" with the public. You are certainly to be commended for being one of the first (and bravest) to attempt to begin a dialogue between an at least somewhat disillusioned public and the Climate Science Community.

However, I believe you've overlooked a critically important question:

Can the overall political-social-scientific system itself be trustworthy when it comes to Climate Science?

If that overall system is untrustworthy, it makes no sense to trust the output of anybody that's part of that system.

From my days of studying Economics and Political Choice Theory, any time you have a mix of big-government, big-advocacy, government funded science, and the possibility of using the output of that science to further big-government and big-advocacy ends, ClimateGate is exactly what you’ll get.

Every time.

It’s not the fault of anybody or even any group. It’s inherent in the system.

I believe that we cannot trust climate scientists because they are part of an utrustworthy system. And there is no way to make the system trustworthy.

Where there is money and power, there is corruption.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. (Lord Acton).

You (and many other scientists) may be saints, but unfortunately, we can't trust the system.

Thanks,
Bret

She actually responded:

Bret, thanks for your email. You may be right, but somewhere in there science needs to be science, and the institutions that support science need to do much better job. Not sure how all this will play out, but hopefully reason will play a role somewhere in all this!

If reason plays a role, I suspect she won't like the result.

Post-Normal Science

Climate scientists have not been shown in a particularly favorable light lately. The "Climategate" emails, a number of high-profile mistakes and retractions by the IPCC, and the continued inaccuracy of the predictions of the climate models have shown the climate scientists to be all too fallible, biased, and not particularly trustworthy human beings.

An Oxford philosopher, Jerry Ravitz, has contemplated the special stresses put on the interface between science and the public and policy makers when there is a situation which can be described as "facts uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent".

He considers it to be a new paradigm and calls it:

"Post-Normal Science, which until now has not really attracted very much attention in the mainstream. I’ve met people who found it an inspiration and liberation, as it enabled them to recognise the deep uncertainties in their scientific work that colleagues wished to ignore. ... We are not saying that this is a desirable, natural or normal state for science.

"We place it by means of a diagram, a quadrant-rainbow with two axes. These are ’systems uncertainties’ and ‘decision stakes’. When both are small, we have ‘applied science’, which must be the vast majority of scientific work in keeping civilisation running. When either is medium, we have ‘professional consultancy’, like the surgeon or consultant engineer. The basic insight of PNS is that there is another zone, where either attribute is large."

Ravitz, as is the wont of many philosophers, tends to use a thousand words to explain a concept where ten would almost do. The other 990 words are used for nuances that are ornately twisted into pretzels and chained together to embroider and frame the concept (this paragraph is my feeble attempt to directly illustrate the sorts of extraneous prose used by philosophers - did I succeed?). As a result, it's very difficult to know exactly what the hell he's trying to say.

But the gist is that under the "decision urgent" criterion, it is permissible - nay necessary! - for scientists to frame the debate in such a manner that the public and policy makers will come to the "correct" conclusion and therefore take the "correct" actions.

It's no wonder to me that Post-Normal Science "has not really attracted very much attention in the mainstream" since it has some rather serious problems, in my opinion. The most glaring is that if we have "facts uncertain", then in general, and with Climate Change in particular, how can we know that we're in a "decision urgent" state? Especially since "decision urgent" is then used to trump truth, honesty, ethics, legality, and all of the other mores and institutions upon which civilization is built. Especially when the "correct" conclusion involves committing staggering levels of resources, remaking civilization, and consigning masses of humanity to poverty. Other than that, hey, I'm an open-minded kinda guy.

Unfortunately, Post-Normal Science has attracted attention in the Climate Science community. Using Ravitz's logic, Stephen Schneider, a Stanford Climatologist wrote:

...we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we have to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.

While the above statement is fairly old (1989), at this point it's pretty obvious to me that this attitude is pervasive throughout climate science, especially for those scientists who interact with the media, directly or indirectly. But Schneider left out one thing. Not only are the scenarios scary, but remember, the science is settled, especially if it's Post-Normal Science.

The Wisdom of the Swivel-Eyed Loons

James Delingpole gives blog commenters a big compliment:

... without wishing to flatter you [blog commenters] too much, you blog-addicted, foaming-mouthed, swivel-eyed loons – I’ve found the comments sections on blogs to be bastions of wisdom, rough-hewn common sense, wit, and often amazingly well-informed insight. And I don’t just mean on my blogs. What I always find equally heartening is when you look up an article online by, say, Polly Toynbee or some crack-papering fraudster from the Met Office and find its inconsistencies and idiocies being torn to shreds by a readership far more intelligent and on the ball than almost anyone in the liberal commentariat.

And this, I think, is the crux of the matter. The main reason so many left-liberals so loathe and fear the internet is that it is a medium that favours the libertarian right.

I don't think that the internet particularly favours the libertarian right. I think that it favours any group with at least some reasonable arguments that has limited or no access to any other media outlet. Libertarians happen to be one such group.

Since I'm feeling particularly loony today (though perhaps not swivel-eyed), I'll take the compliment whole-heartedly.

Affirmative Action Marriage

The existence of race, or at least the moderately clear delineation between races, is proof that the majority of us are hopelessly racist, and racist where it counts the most. It is one thing to prefer members of your own race when it comes to hiring people, but quite another with far greater impact for racial preferences to come into play when it comes to choosing that special someone to share those lifelong commitments of marriage and raising a family.

If we were all or even mostly all truly colorblind when it comes to love, I would expect that statistically we would see far, far more interracial marriages than we do. Therefore, in the equations of love, race clearly plays a significant role.

Clearly this is wrong, immoral, and a detriment to society. What possible reason is there to give preference to members of your race? All races are equally beautiful, intelligent, compassionate, etc., so there is no possible rational reason to marry someone of your own race.

Since the government already administers affirmative action for employment and education, and since marriage is a legal institution created and supported by the government, and since this proven racism in regards to marriage is clearly irrational and wrong, and since the government has and does get to decide who can marry (gays cannot, siblings cannot, interracial marriage was once illegal but is now legal, etc.) the government has a right - nay a duty! - to correct this egregious wrong.

The solution is obvious. When social security cards are issued, race identifiers are added to the card (and social security database) with the proportion of cards getting marked with each race the same as the proportion of that race in the general population. Then you are legally limited to marry only those people who have the race identified on your social security card.

Then, in a few generations, the problem will be completely solved and we'll have a pleasing continuum of skin color.

Too Big to Fail

I'm an advocate of providing incentives to entities that are "Too Big to Fail" to split up into smaller, independent components that won't endanger the economy or even civilization itself if they happen to fail. The devil's in the details regarding how to do that, but I think it's probably plausible and desirable for private companies.

However, the Federal Government is the 800 pound gorilla (or rather the $3,800,000,000,000 gorilla) in the room when it comes to entities that are "Too Big to Fail". Failure doesn't necessarily mean a short-term catastrophic failure. An entity that becomes increasingly sclerotic and non-functional to point where it parasitically sucks in an enormous vortex of resources from its increasingly beleaguered hosts also becomes a failure at some point.

Since the Government is "Too Big to Fail" (and therefore "Too Big to Exist"), it should be broken up. Since it is so large it should be broken up into numerous entities. Picking a number out-of-the-air, I'd say that breaking it up into 50 entities (or 57 if you're Obama), would be about perfect. Conveniently, we happen to have 50 mostly functioning government entities to which we can transfer responsibilities and authority. Also conveniently, with the possible exception of a few of those States, none of them are "Too Big to Fail". Problem solved.

Wasn't that what our Founders had in mind? Smart dudes.

Hi Mom!

My youngest daughter (10) wrote "Hi Mom!" on her hand this morning. I hope she doesn't get in trouble for it at school.

The Writing's on the Palm

I don't particularly like or dislike Sarah Palin, but I'll have to admit she has comic genius. The Media had a conniption fit and gave widespread coverage regarding her scribbling a few words on her hand (allegedly notes?) during the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville.

Her response? She wrote "Hi Mom" on her palm while campaigning for Rick Perry in Texas. Let's see if the Media gives that one as much coverage. The Media will look foolish whether they do or don't cover it since it has more or less the same level of relevance (i.e. none) as the "notes" at the Tea Party.

These events led one commenter at Gateway Pundit to quip:

Next speaking stop, she will have “John 3:16″ on her hand.

Media goes mad trying to figure out the code; calls for separation of palms and psalm...

Well, you asked for it Mr. President

Every president inherits the consequences of policies and events from their predecessor. Most people know that and remember to cut a new president some slack. Continuing to blame a prior executive for problems 6 or 12 months beyond assuming office is juvenile and unseemly. It depletes any sense of goodwill afforded by the opposition.

Well, there you go again:

The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.

People are angry, and they're frustrated. Not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years.

Surely Just Coincidence

When Obama announced that he would travel to Massachusetts to campaign for Coakley against Scott Brown, her probability of winning the election according to Intrade's prediction markets plunged from 80% to 40% in the approximately 48 hours following the announcement. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Surely Obama's presence could only help?

Wrongheaded even before the drift

In response to a comment to the previous post, presenting a David Hogberg review of the latest book by Thomas Sowell:

With his new work, Intellectuals and Society, Sowell has finally made good on his 20-year-old promise to write about intellectuals. He has also made good on his threat. Sowell takes aim at the class of people who influence our public debate, institutions, and policy. Few of Sowell’s targets are left standing at the end, and those who are stagger back to their corner, bloody and bruised.

Sowell defines intellectuals as an occupation, as people whose “work begins and ends with ideas.” This includes academics, especially those in the humanities and social sciences, policy wonks, and, to a certain extent, journalists. This distinguishes them from occupations in which the work begins with ideas and ends with the application of ideas. Physicians or engineers usually start with ideas about how to approach their work, but eventually they have to put them into practice by treating patients or constructing bridges.

As a result, intellectuals are free from one of the most rigorous constraints facing other occupations: external standards. An engineer will ultimately be judged on whether the structures he designs hold up, a businessman on whether he makes money, and so on. By contrast, the ultimate test of an intellectual’s ideas is whether other intellectuals “find those ideas interesting, original, persuasive, elegant, or ingenious. There is no external test.”

An intellectual’s reputation, then, depends not on whether his ideas are verifiable but on the plaudits of his fellow intellectuals.

Intellectuals, of course, have expertise — highly specialized knowledge of a particular subject. The problem, according to Sowell, is that they think their superior knowledge in one area means they have superior knowledge in most other areas. Yet knowledge is so vast and dispersed that it is doubtful that any one person has even 1 percent of the knowledge available. Even the brightest intellectuals cannot possibly know all the needs, wants, and preferences of millions of people. Unfortunately, they have considerable incentive to behave as if they do.

Reinforcing these incentives is what Sowell dubs the “Vision of the Anointed.” Intellectuals’ belief in their own superior knowledge and virtue leads to a belief that they are an anointed elite who are qualified to make decisions for the rest of us in order to lead humanity to a better life. Under this vision problems such as poverty, injustice, and war are not due to inherent human weaknesses, but are the products of society’s institutions. Solving those problems requires changing those institutions, which requires changing the ideas behind the institutions. And who is better suited for that task than those whose work begins and ends with ideas?

“There could hardly be a set of incentives and constraints more conducive to getting people of great intellect to say sweeping, reckless or even foolish things,” Sowell states. He warns that if “no one has even 1 percent of the knowledge currently available . . . the imposition from the top down of the notions favored by the elites, convinced of their own superior knowledge and virtue, is a formula for disaster.”

The most telling portions of Intellectuals and Society are the ones in which Sowell chronicles the disasters that occur when intellectuals succeed in getting politicians, judges, and other policymakers to impose their vision on society.

Sowell writes that it “was part of a long-standing assumption among many intellectuals . . . that it is the role of third parties to bring meaning into the lives of the masses.”

Sowell also emphasizes the fact that intellectuals take their beliefs as axiomatic truths rather than hypotheses to be tested.

Since the 1980s, conservatives and libertarians have pushed back to the point that intellectuals’ “overwhelming dominance has been reduced somewhat.” Yet he warns that the intellectuals’ vision is still dominant: “Not since the days of the divine right of kings has there been such a presumption of a right to direct others and constrain their decisions, largely through expanded powers of government.” But now that Sowell has given us a penetrating analysis of that vision, perhaps it will be easier to fight it.

A previous post dealt with the folly of intellectuals presumed divine right.

Drifting Elites

The intellectual elites have always lived in their own bubble of ideas, quite apart from the rest of us. That bubble has been drifting away quite rapidly and looks set to continue to do so.



The above graph, courtesy of Charles Murray, shows political attitudes from the General Social Survey of non-Latino whites ages 30–49 in the survey year. What it shows quite clearly is that while most of the country (at least the white part) is mildly trending towards being more conservative, the "intellectual uppers" are heading off the charts on the liberal end (for more details on the chart visit Murray's post).

This ties in well with a recent New York Times column by David Brooks where he whines that, "Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year." Perhaps that's because the "educated class" (or "intellectual uppers") have ideas that are so far removed from the reality that the rest of us experience that those ideas simply don't make any sense to us commoners anymore.

The Foundation of the Blue State Blues

Some Blue States, like California (my home State), are really hurting. Not only do they face never ending fiscal crises, but people, especially people in their most productive years, are starting to leave these States in droves.

California was once a really great place to live. It had (and still has) great weather, beautiful terrain, and bountiful natural resources.

The typical conservative explanation is that all this wealth attracted leaching liberals who took over the government and taxed and regulated the State from prosperity into its current mess.

There may be a grain of truth to that, but the question is why did everybody else (besides the leaching liberals) let this happen. The answer, in my opinion, is that changes in Federal Tax law deserves a substantial part of the blame.

Let me explain.

From FDR's administration until after Reagan was elected, the top Federal Tax Rates were always above 70% and even exceeded 90% at points. But State Income tax was deductible. During that period, in those States with a preponderance of high income earners, both the earners and the rest of the State could benefit from instituting high State income tax rates for the high income earners and returning part of those taxes as services.

To illustrate, let's consider an example. Let's say your marginal Federal Tax rate is 90%. Then for each dollar the State taxes and receives from you (which you then deduct from your Federal taxable income), your total income tax bill (State plus Federal) rises only 10 cents. The State then provides 15 or 20 cents in services to you, a bit goes to help the poor in your State, and the rest is pocketed by the bureaucrats and lobbyists. Everybody wins! Well, everybody but the poor and middle class in all States who have to pay more to provide the revenue needed by the Federal government.

California leveraged that situation wonderfully well. They built great infrastructure (like the University of California), provided great services and funded fabulous levels of graft and corruption. Everybody assumed this gravy train would run forever.

However, two things happened that ended the free ride fairly abruptly. Federal income taxes were slashed by Reagan and the Alternate Minimum Tax (AMT) scheme was instituted which greatly reduced the ability to deduct State income tax. Suddenly paying State income taxes was a big net negative for the taxpayer. A dollar of revenue to the State was pretty much a dollar out of the pocket of the high income taxpayer.

Suddenly the services to the high income tax payers couldn't possibly make it worth it to pay the tax (that's why high income earners are leaving in droves), the programs for the poor couldn't be lavishly funded, infrastructure couldn't be maintained, and, worst of all, the fabulous levels of graft and corruption to which so many people had become so addicted could only be maintained by massive and unsustainable borrowing. Since graft and corruption are the lifeblood of politicians and lobbyists, the massive and unsustainable borrowing is a given.

This is simply a case of people responding to incentives created beyond their control. Unfortunately, bureaucracies can generally only expand, so it can't really be undone at this point until the Blue States go hopelessly bankrupt. It's a bit like a Roach Motel - or for my State, "Welcome to the Hotel California."