Michael Katsimbris's Blog

Moving Back

2008-09-11T18:42:00.002-04:00

I am moving my writing back to The Nappy Cat with one of my best friends and colleagues, Will.

My feedburner RSS feed will direct you to the content that I write from there, so don’t worry about having to update that.

My reason for moving back is really just the fact that I wanted to start writing with my friend Will again. Especially now because he has started writing more again.

As much as I try, Will has a better way of showing the absolute farces that our media and the portrayal of our political system are. I’m hoping that by writing with him again, we can wake up some people to see the world for what it really is when it is at its worst and best.

My blogspot here will still remain up, so the archive will always be available.

Your Dissapointment and Our Ignorance

2008-08-30T07:30:00.000-04:00

There are two major points I would like to bring up regarding Senator Obama’s pick of Senator Joe Biden to be his running mate.

If the friends I have on Facebook are any representative sampling of the 18-30 demographic (and they aren’t), then it seems most young and white reactions were showing disappointment in the pick of Senator Biden.

There’s a few horrifying good reasons these people used to come to their disdain for Joe. First, they love Hillary Clinton, and wanted that “dream” ticket. So, let me get this straight. After all the horrific things Clinton supporters say the Obama team did to them, they want to be part of the ticket? And since when did being married to a guy who happens to be the President become “experience?”

Even then, if you can remember (and you don’t by the way, because you would have had to of cared about politics back in high school, and you didn’t) one of the selling points on Bill Clinton was that with Hillary, it was like getting two presidents for the price of one. So, what was she then? A co-president? And if so, would that not make it a bit weird to get her there again? And what of Bill’s role in the White House?

Another real piece of hatred from my friends is their absolute vitriol towards Biden for the commencement speech he gave at the University of Delaware in 2004. Apparently they did not know that Senator Biden is long-winded and likes to talk about things that matter; for example, the war in Iraq and America’s role in the world. To those who graduated that day, Senator Biden should have talked more about inane and stupid important issues, such as how awesome college students are for being among hundreds of thousands of other college graduates who have yet to do anything special with their lives. Truly, there could not be anything more important than us?

That brings me to my second point, and the reason why they did not notice that Senator Biden was trying to do in the commencement speech. Biden was trying to convey a message regarding a prescient matter regarding the United States.

Even then, none in attendance cared that what he said then, and still says now along with every other established leader in this country, continues to stay on pattern with what can be identified as “American Hegemony.” That is to say, we influence the world, and so long as we do any action in question, there is no crime; just a misguided attempt at dropping our awesome “freedom bombs.” No one questions that, why? And if there was going to be anyone to have that conversation with, it would be Joe Biden.

And even more to the point, how does the vice president matter that much to these people? If the pick of a running mate does matter that much, then Vice President Cheney has gotten his way and dutifully changed the way we view the executive branch. Now, all of a sudden, the Vice President matters a great deal in decision making. How come we don’t remember that at some point Dan Quayle was once Vice President?

Cheney also has made us think differently about the presidency. Essentially, it’s become a monarchy. The President must be convinced of what we do or do not do in foreign policy. Congress is there for…I don’t even really know anymore. I do not think that even congress knows why it exists anymore.

And once again, being that this is a “representative democracy,” if you want to blame someone for the way things are going, you can always point the finger at yourself.

Ultimately these two converging points of not liking Joe Biden (for idiotic reasons and thinking that it actually matters that you don’t like Joe Biden) force us ultimately to this conclusion: I’m not sure we really know what’s going in the world, or even how the U.S. plays a role in it.

Oh, and by the way, for those oif you “young Democracts” who watched Obama's acceptance speech, I have a few points for you:

- Stop watching so much of the cable coverage.

- Don't read just one review by the Associated Press, and then consider yourself an expert.

- Obama is still a politician, so don't tell me you were disappointed in his acceptance speech. The only person who would not give you the kind of speech that Obama or any other politician would is Ron Paul, and you can see how America likes him.

Intuition

2008-08-13T20:02:00.001-04:00

A little over a week ago, I emailed Tim Harford regarding if a study had ever been done that asked the following question of the participants:

"How many times have you asked someone out (on a date) and have been surprised at their response (also indicate whether they responded yes or no)?"

I was asking Tim about how intuitive we (humans) are at interpreting signals and variables from other people in terms of realtionships. In business, I have witnessed questions being asked of other parties even though the questioner knows what the answer will be. Most of the time, the questioner asks in order to fulfill some sort of requirement of asking from their superior.

Tim replied to my inquiry:

Alas, I've never seen such a question. Fascinating subject, though. Sorry not to be able to help.

One can only wonder what it takes to apply for grant monies to make these studies happen. Nevertheless, you have it from me that I will do what I can to find more on the topic.

Competition in Formula 1

2008-08-04T10:00:00.003-04:00

Did you ever wonder how competitive top athletes (in any sport) can be? Allow me to show you just how competitive things can get in Formula 1. Fernando Alonso (2005 & 2006 driver’s champion) was in a Thursday press conference with Heikki Kovalainen, where they had the following exchange following a question over what their activities might be during the Formula 1 summer break.

Kovalainen: In my family I make decisions where I go, I don't know what my girlfriend will do, but this is my holiday.
Alonso: You will see... wait two years!

Now, while that doesn’t strike as particularly competitive, you have to wait a few more questions again to see another exchange regarding their girlfriends.

Alonso: I will do whatever my wife wants. If it's time to join the club, I will join, if she says no, then I won't join.
Kovalainen: For me it's the opposite; if they ask me to join the club, I make my decision whether my girlfriend is happy or not. I try to keep it that way, I think it's better.

If I did not know any better, and I may not, I would actually venture to say that these two drivers were having a “you-don’t-know-what-a-relationship-is-like off” between each other during the Thursday press conference.

More importantly; I have no idea who won that. And I actually want to know. See, here’s the thing: Alonso has been described as difficult to work with and a bit of a pre-Madonna. Yet, apparently from the conference, he explains that his wife’s wishes are a super priority for him.

Kovalainen on the other hand is known as the super nice guy in the paddock, and always a pleasure to be around, yet apparently he has the relationship that most men have never heard of. I mean, seriously, two people maintaining their own individuality and goals in a relationship? Who ever heard of such a thing?

So, in order to find out how a relationship should really be, I propose that Fernando Alonso and Heikki Kovalainen have a race…using the cars their wives drive. And this race will take place…on the Nurburgring. And I mean the whole ring, not the adjacent Formula One circuit.

And that’s just part one of the event. In the second part, Alonso and Kovalainen’s wives will then drive in their husbands’ respective formula one car around the Grand Prix circuit.

No matter the result though, one thing is for sure; all drivers better bring back those cars with a full tank, or they might have a quiet ride home.

Finally then, after a proper sporting competition, we can see what type of relationship is the proper way forward. I can think of many no better scientific process in determining such an important question with human relationships.

Thinking about Vengeance

2008-07-25T10:00:00.007-04:00

Over time, economists have been trying to answer questions that revolve around incentives. The research has started to expand into many fields, and answer questions that go far beyond monetary policy. I know, what’s more exciting than monetary policy? But, hold on.

The further economists probe into the questions of incentives for wine choices, dating, crime, and other non-monetary venues, the more hatred is spewed upon them from other academic fields. Psychologists, ecologists, biologists…take your pick, and no matter how hard an economist has tried to garner them as co-writers, the hate will spew forth.

The man whom I predict will receive the latest in inter-academic wrath will be Naci H. Mocan, who has just released a working paper regarding vengeance. He writes in the abstract that:

Females, older people, working people, people who live in high-crime areas of their country and people who are at the bottom 50% of their country's income distribution are more vengeful. The intensity of vengeful feelings dies off gradually over time. The findings suggest that vengeful feelings of people are subdued as a country develops economically and becomes more stable politically and socially and that both country characteristics and personal attributes are important determinants of vengeance.

It is important we understand that while Mocan is speaking of crime, he is not writing about terrorism.

You see, recently we had a change in conventional wisdom about terrorists. We used to think they latched on to terrorism because they had no jobs. Then, we started noticing that acts of terrorism were being carried out by people who were not exactly desperate for money, per se. Even Osama Bin Laden has gone to college.

The separation between terrorist and vengeful poor guy really comes from a state of mind. If the information that has been coming out lately is right, then the vengeful poor are vengeful because of actual economic reasons. “Class warfare” is a term that everybody hates, so I’ll use it. It seems as though terrorists don’t have to worry about the same thing that the vengeful poor do, so they have time to develop religious psychoses regarding desert land whose wealth is defined by the supply of a substance (oil) that would have no where near the value if the rest of the world was not as “secular” as it is.

The “cause” is a piece of land roughly the size of New Jersey; of course I’m talking about Israel. So, we have sovereign countries in oil rich land that want to retake land that has only religious significance. I understand that my use of the phrase “only religious” is a bit underestimating considering that wars have been started over religious grounds.

I think what we learn here is that vengeance comes to those who feel slighted, or cheated in some way. People who feel that the current system is stacked against them will most likely feel vengeful. Their outlying of the system can come either economically, or religiously.
Maybe we need to look at what people everywhere see as unfair because those who feel that they are treated most unfairly will seek to remedy their situations in some of the direst of manners.

(By the way, I started writing a week ago on Thursday, July 17th, but apparently Stephen Dubner subscribes to the same email lists I do.)

Active Citizenship

2008-07-14T10:00:00.000-04:00

I have written before about “active citizenship.” But, what is it? What does it require? Why is it necessary?

Considering that the July 4^th anniversary (U.S. Independence Day) has just passed once again, there has been clamor once again over the idea of self governance. Americans are in love with themselves every July 4^th, and the idea that we are self governing; that we have our destiny within our own hands. But, beyond 9^th grade Civics, if we investigate deeper, we end up realizing that our idea of self-governance is really just a farce. Self-governance is merely the veil over our eyes to disguise us from the truth that we are not in control.

You need not look very far for the ideas against where we stand as voters. Those who vote often have absurd and diluted ideas of proper remedy to our nation’s concerns. Not only that, but voting is not in itself active citizenship. If I didn’t know any better, I could have sworn that I actually saw a farm animal in the voting booth in 2004.

Every election cycle I have constantly asked my own friends to abstain from voting. The idea being that my vote would count for more; as if I were the elected representative for our group of friends. But this does not even count as a dent; or any voting anomaly.

Active citizenship, sadly to me only, means that all citizens are informed and educated regarding the policies that are currently enacted, the goals they have for themselves, and the consequences of changing current policies and/or adding or deleting them. While I can write the instructions for such active citizenship in a sentence, the actual “doing” involves a generous amount of time spent reading and asking questions about what is going on in our nation and, maybe even more importantly, state.

Unfortunately, what most people consider active citizenship is devolved into what many people call, “hot button” issues. Or, as I like to refer them to, “Issues which will mean less and less over time.” Gay marriage is a perfect example. The more time goes on, the more people do not care. Yet, even though more and more people do not care, interest groups against gay marriage get louder and louder.

What about foreign policy? Taxes? Why can’t voters ever organize large enough for those items? Well, this is where active citizenship comes into play. You see, in areas such as foreign policy and taxes, we defer to so called, “experts.” This term, expert, I love.

A few times now I have hear Noam Chomsky give an example when people want to know about “doing more” and what it requires. He, and subsequently I, queried as to why people have the time to memorize a plethora of minutia on sport statistics while not bothering to know any real important history that could give context to our current political-global climate.

And sadly - because most everyone in the U.S. hates Noam Chomsky - he is right. Why don’t we know that the 1812 Overture, which is played every 4^th of July, is actually about the defeat of Napoleon, and nothing to do with America? I mean this kind of ignorance smacks of the humor that was in an episode of The Simpsons where at an air show, the announcer says, “Now, the pride of the United States Air Force, the British made Harrier jet.”

Apart from the effort of memorizing sports statistics, the fervor that people have in order to call in the morning sport shows and combat these experts is barely palpable. You see the difference now? Sports: YES! Politics: Why would I waste my time with that?

Once we can get past the idea that we can divert more energy into our political discourse for the everyday man, we then have to ask why it is necessary. The answer is actually quite simple really. We should act and care about our politics so that if we do complain, we’ll know why, and we’ll know that we’re doing something about it.

Look no further than our incumbency rates in the United States (95% if I remember correctly). Sure, the system is broken, but the apathy of our body politic does not help. And the numbers only show that if you’re complaining about how things are going, then we all need to ask why keep sending the same people back. Is there ability to blame others that good?

I’m not going to make a stance here, although I’m sure it sounds like I have. But what I have tried to do is give the idea some exposure. This is about asking yourself if you actually feel like you are governing yourself. And if you don’t think you are, then maybe we need to change some of the wording that we use to describe our political system.

Asked for Advice on Dating/Signalling

2008-07-07T10:00:00.010-04:00

A question comes to me:

Mike,

If you have asked a girl out, and she doesn't respond to it, but still talks to you, what is the proper signal to take away?

Amazing this question came to me because I have experienced such singals recently, and before, but I have some more perspective now. Let us look back on how I discussed signaling over a year ago. I wrote:

Simply put: I’m signaling _______ because _______ is what I want

....

Not only that, but we need to remember that actions speak louder than words. Just like how an economist would say, “They voted with their pocketbooks.”

Sad to say to my questioner, but this means that chances are, you are not whom she is looking for. And that of course assumes that she is looking in the first place.

However, let us try to gain sime more perspective. As Bella DePaulo has been writing of late on the Psychology Today Blog, the young woman you are asking out may actually be in touch with her own single-ness. Psychologically speaking, DePaulo surmises that our society gets caught up and trained into the thinking that we need to be married, or that our own selves are defined by a relationship, or by who we are with someone else.

So, one would hope that the person you seek to form a relationship with has a well defined sense of self.

Unfortunately, as an economist, this does not change the fact that you need to spend time with this woman in order to form the bond that two independent people could form if they find their common interests, personalities, and goals. While the psychological underpinnings might be up in the air in terms of the possibilities of a great relationship, the economics so far says that the person you wrote of does not have the time, or is not willing to concede the time to do so with you.

But, take heart; maybe this will allow you the time to reexamine your own personal utility function. What are the items that matter most in your life? How would you prioritize those items, and do you see any of them as something that could ever be sacrificed? Or, how about your own personal thoughts on what a relationship is. Do you even think that it’s necessary to have to sacrifice something?

As DePaula points out, when we are comfortable with ourselves and accepting of who we are without being identified in a relationship, we can actually make better decisions about ourselves and relationships. Otherwise, if you are not honest with yourself, or her, any contract and form of signaling you do would only lead you to not filling your part, or never being satisfied with what you were expecting.

Long story short, a few notes:

- Life is not going to stop, and I would hate to think you would stop yours while someone else continues with theirs. So, don't give up on your own goals and ambitions, and don't be afraid to be inspried and get new ones.
- Try to keep a good sense of yourself, and who you are as you go through these signaling and contracting phases.

Inflation Targeting

2008-06-30T10:00:00.005-04:00

Well, I assume Paul Krugman got tired of spreading misinformation, and decided to get back to something in which he is actually quite great at: straight forward analysis.

There is significance in what Krugman wrote because when Ben Bernanke became chairman of the Fed, many, including myself, understood that Bernanke is a fan of inflation targeting, and would most likely become a “hawk” when it came to inflation in the U.S.

So, it is significant to consider that Krugman cites Bernanke’s ability to put off inflation targeting in order to keep economic activity high. Here are some qualifications:

Krugman’s main point is that this is not the 1970’s, and that stagflation may not exactly be on the horizon just yet. The circumstances between the 1970s and today are different.

Also, since Bernanke is such an inflation hawk, and continues to be mindful of it in his testimony to Congress, I feel it safe to assume that if and when inflation were to become the most important target of the Fed in relation to our economy, Bernanke would do what is necessary. Who knows, maybe we should be thanking that Bernanke is the chairman of the Fed at this time.

But the idea of inflation targeting is an interesting one to posit. I remember when Alan Greenspan was coming out with his book; he did an interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. There, Jon Stewart asked what was so “free market” about an economy that has a “Fed” meddling with it? Much to Greenspan’s credit, he admitted that it really was not a true free market.

Greg Mankiw and Ricardo Reis discuss inflation targeting here in a way that not many of us think about. The question is, by what measures do we target inflation? Mankiw and Reis explain in their abstract that:

...one tentative conclusion is that a central bank that wants to achieve maximum stability of economic activity should use a price index that gives substantial weight to the level of nominal wages.

This is a nice tie in to what monetary policy fights with all the time, as well as any economy: the balance between employment and inflation. Examining nominal wages for inflation target purposes shows that targeting inflation will also be relevant to employment in the sense that our wages are tied to employment.

In the end, Ben Bernanke has the responsibility of making decisions regarding where our economy is in balancing employment and inflation, or making the final decisions on where to take that balance. Even though the Fed is not how every economist envisioned a “free market” economy, I trust that Bernanke will do his best. If only that trust was some guarantee to making the right decision every time.

Engagement Ring Trading

2008-06-24T10:00:00.001-04:00

A few days ago, a good friend of mine emailed me with a query on two things: (1) what to do with an old engagement ring, and (2) if he had an idea of a new market.

This is what he wrote me:

...apparently you typically get 10-25% the original price when you resell an engagement ring. So reselling it is like the worst thing you can do. And then you take your crumby resale value and put it towards a new ring.
So I got this idea. What if there was a site where guys like me who still have an old engagement ring can swap them with each other? So neither guy's girlfriend winds up getting a ring from his ex and he doesn't get screwed on resale value. It winds up just like getting a used, discounted ring which people do all the time and women never care about.
It's not about what I paid for the ring and making it back or what I would pay for a new ring because an engagement ring by nature has more perceived value than actual value. I'm more interested in the ability to simultaneously cut ties with a bad memory, create a new, positive meaning for someone else, and giving them the opportunity to do the same for you. There's something terribly empty about reselling the ring to a jeweler and buying a new one. It starts your new experience off with a bit of bitterness, a reminder of what you lost, instead of a feeling of helping someone in the same boat as you.

I understood his query, or, at least I thought I did. The intrinsic value my friend spoke of clouded my judgment.

I decided to get some professional help, so I wrote Tim Harford, and this is what Tim replied to me when I proposed the question to him:

I am not sure this solves the problem. Why not sell the ring on eBay? And if resold engagement rings sell for a cheap price, well, why not buy the replacement on eBay too? Not sure what the additional value of the exchange is.
If the exchange is valuable, it's a variant on the kidney exchange market set up by Al Roth and others; sometimes you can swap but not buy. But I am not convinced that the parallel is very strong.

I gave my friend Tim’s opinion, to which he agreed was the most sensible answer. He and I both admitted though, that the perceived intrinsic value of the ring clouded our judgments in terms of the proper course of action. The idea was that we could somehow reinforce another’s intrinsic values with their rings in the exchange.

However, when reading Tim’s response, the intrinsic value is essentially already there. You can only imagine that someone has had to go through something emotionally similar if they have to resell such a ring on eBay, as well. So, in the sense that the intrinsic value of the ring is there, the market that my friend spoke of (ex-engagement rings) is there too.

Bad Etiquette or Myth of Cap and Trade

2008-06-16T07:00:00.001-04:00

A few days ago, Robert Samuelson came out with an article regarding carbon economics with some insight on the efficiency of cap and trade v. carbon tax. Here is what he wrote towards the end of the article:

But if we're going to try to stimulate new technologies through price, let's do it honestly. A straightforward tax on carbon would favor alternative fuels and conservation just as much as cap-and-trade but without the rigid emission limits. A tax is more visible and understandable.

I dugg the article on Digg and made a comment. A user at Digg replied here to my comment saying:

a coersive (sic) tax where there is no opt out possibility is not honest - it is theft.

I really don’t mind being proved wrong over and over again, but a short reply like that with little to no context is more frustrating than progressive. Now, before I go on, let me state that I don’t disagree with that statement. In fact, considering my political leanings, I agree for the most part. However, there are two main problems with his rebuttal.

First, it’s not really a complete answer. In the sense that I have to ask myself since all taxes are coercive, aren’t all taxes theft? I hope for the sake of how he answered that remark, that he means it in those terms. And in that sense, he’s right. All of those taxes are theft, and, I, being always adept to social libertarian anarchism, agree in saying that all taxes are coercive to an extent.

I also hope that you, the reader, understand how his comment seemed, well, rather short. Moreover, and more important, there seems to be a miss in linguistic logic. While a tax could be, or is theft, how is it “not honest?” This is where his having to be a social libertarian anarchist is a necessity for his argument. You see, in my opinion, for the tax to be honest, we should be able to say that I don’t want that, so I’ll vote for someone who will make sure this does not happen. But what if the average voter does not have enough power as a political action committee, or other lobbying firm? Then, of course, no matter what we vote, only those in positions of power will see policies that they like. If you believe that, then you can tell me that the tax is not honest; only in the sense that our own government is illegitimate, which I will gladly leave for you to decide.

But here’s the second part/problem with that answer. Since the entire article was meant to culminate to, “A tax is more visible and understandable [when compared to cap and trade],” then one could reason that the replier meant to discredit the tax opposed to cap and trade. Such an argument, I will happily rejoinder and try to reason against.

With a tax, the price is put on carbon, and only carbon. You can make however much you want of whatever you want, but if x is coming out of your factory, you will be taxed at this rate for x. If the commenter favored cap and trade over the tax, then he would have to admit that it is the exact same goal.

With cap and trade, the government says that you are only allowed to produce x amount of carbon, which we will give you permits for. The minute you run out permits, you have to purchase more from other companies who may have extra. Creating a market like this would actually cost money because it will need to be regulated in order for corruption and rent seeking elements to remain minimal.

So, if we are willing to admit that taxes are thievery, I would still argue that cap and trade is probably worse because now a new market has been created where companies will spend money to buy pollution permits. And the costs of buying those permits will go to the consumer, just like the tax, but with cap and trade the extra costs of regulating another market leave it struggling to keep up with the efficiency of a tax.

Turning the Page

2008-06-09T07:00:00.002-04:00

The status quo simply won't do any more. It never did much for me, and with Barack Obama heading into the general election as the Democratic nominee, I would like to think more of America feels the same.

This leads me to then ask why the Human Rights Campaign still holds as much of us captive as it does. Watching my friends and colleagues being treated as second class citizens is outrageous. Why hasn't more been done? Public opinion on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered community has changed so much within the past few years. Yet, with all the actual capital that the Human Rights Campaign has, it has not seemed to turn into much political capital.

Don't believe me? Look over at Andrew Sullivan, whom for this, it does not get any more personal:

Their main activity in the 1990s was selling the Clinton administration to gays. The reward was some jobs and sinecures for their own clique. And the reason they got along so well with the Clintons is that the Clintons are all about raising political money as well.
...
They get tens of millions of dollars a year from well-intentioned gay men and lesbians. They've been doing it for years. And what have we got? Nothing. Wake up, guys. Give your money to people who actually fight for gay equality.

But with Obama's nomination, I'm hoping the Human Rights Campaign learns that we all want a different way of going towards our goals.

If we can truly believe in the message of a candidate, when someone like Senator Obama talks about changing the way we work within politics, than maybe we can change the maneuvering that happens with many organizations, including the Human Rights Campaign.

If we truly are the ones whom we have been waiting for, then America, we Americans, need to make this happen ourselves. Political apathy is the nourishment of the status quo. Active citizenship is what our country requires in order to make it work well, let alone make it work the way we intend for it to work.

This all means holding the Human Rights Campaign accountable. This means writing and emailing them asking them what they do with your money. Continuing to write them asking for our voices to be heard, and our aspirations to be met.

Andrew Sullivan and I don't agree on every issue, but what I do enjoy the most about him is his ability to instill within us an understanding that we have the inherit abilities to make change. We all have the inherit ability to organize and make known what matters most in our lives. And that is part of the change that Obama himself has been talking about. I'm not saying Obama is the answer though. What I am saying is that a true working government is one whose citizens, all citizens, actively participate And in the vain of active citizenship, we have some work to keep doing.

True Wisdom Isn't Conventional

2008-06-02T07:00:00.003-04:00

“Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom.” - Joseph Stiglitz

Consider all the diet books ever written, all the dating books ever written, or anything published within the self help section of the bookstore. Now look at the recent research from economists who have started to “break away.” Books like Freakonomics, Logic of Life, and Myth of the Rational Voter all take an intuitive approach to some of the latest economic and social policy questions.

What is unfortunate about this is that a dichotomy has been provided where the authors of the aforementioned books are judged as providing something different while they gather an ever larger following.

Even research papers that discuss dating dynamics, which are used in these books, when conversed in the public, or with friends, immediately receive the scoffing that we deem necessary upon “the world is flat” Christopher Columbus meme.

What ends up hitting me right in the face like Columbus hitting North America is that this is just another reminder that conventional wisdom holds its sway, and it will not let its grip on the general public go. At least, a significant portion of us know when we've traveled to a different hemisphere, rather than the Indian coast.

The hope is for a realization that what we are hitting upon now is not just startling theorems, but a return to reason. In light of a paradigm shift, we normally cling to our conventional wisdom much as a religious fundamentalist clings to scripture. All new information, which shows counter, is wrong, misguided, or deliberate misinformation as part of a new conspiracy.

What we, as the public, do get instead, is massive amounts of rhetoric. Grandiose wording, “-isms,” and quick hit self affirmation guidelines that do little to look at our real problems, but instead make us feel good about a short term decision. You want proof right now? Just look at our election coverage. Obama, who has actually run, by most pundit standards, a different campaign, and whom I respect as a candidate, has espoused claims that are grandiose and near to impossible, such as, "I believe in our ability to perfect this nation," when all evidence shows that if there is anything to be cynical about, it is the idea of there being some sort of end goal in sight for democracy. A nirvana of democracy, if you will. In reality, there is no end goal, but rather a constant struggle.

But we fall for this rhetoric more often than you would think. And we as a people apparently need to hold on to this type of quick-hit, simple thinking. Almost two years ago now, I tried to invoke something different into the debate. The new paradigm centered around two ideas. First, that one need not be a super model to have stringent standards, especially when considering that a long term relationship is the end game. Second, was the idea that for two people to like each other, it takes a myriad of variables to come together in a proper manner.

What Passey had done for all of us at the time was show that it's important for us to be honest with ourselves when it comes to relationships. Otherwise, we end up committing the same mistakes over and over again, living some sort of horrible relationship soap opera where the same story line gets repeated constantly, but with simply a new partner.

And that brings us full circle. Notice that it's the intuitive, simple approaches, and honest answers that have now come to create the most trouble against conventional wisdom.

The NHRA's Suffrage

2008-05-12T07:00:00.004-04:00

Recently, there have been a few milestone reached for women in modern day motorsports. Danica Patrick won her first Indy Racing League race and Ashley Force in the NHRA assured her continued point lead, after winning her first national event.

But while the milestones may seem somewhat similar, there are many differences that should be noted. Most importantly, while Danica's success is ground breaking to an extent, it must be observed that the real issue of women in motorsport is a choice of two possibilities. On the one hand, females may be predisposed (for whatever reason) to not wanting to race. On the other hand, females may be steered away from anything that racing in general, or certain types of racing, because of our own established gender roles.

If females are predisposed to racing, or not racing, then we will have to deal with it because there is currently little we can do about genetics. But what about our own ideas of gender roles? What about the ways in which one raises their children?

For me, here is the real question: Why does the NHRA have considerably more women drivers, and other forms of motor racing do not? I posed this question to an outside NHRA expert, and was treated to the usual, "ratings and advertising" answer. And while that response might suffice normally, it does not answer the real issue regarding why the NHRA has so many more women participating than other forms of motorsport.

This is where it gets a bit saucy. But we’ll get to the unpleasant consequences of my theory’s holes later.

I want the average person out there, you, your mother, your neighbor, anyone to go out to a drag racing track one weekend, and a karting event the next. I want you to look at the gender make up of who is racing those junior classes. What you will find will be…well, it won’t be startling, honestly, but it will prove my point, and show where my logic comes from.

In my two seasons of observation I have found that the junior dragsters have a considerable amount more female racers than the karting participants. Why? How could, at such a young age, girls develop a preference for dragsters over karts?

Posit for a moment that maybe this has something to do with the parents getting their kids into dragsters over karts. Why? Possibly, for the reason that it seems safer to go drag racing than karting. At a young age, junior dragsters are speed limited, whereas the karting limitations don’t make much of a difference because most accidents occur at corners with kart on kart, wheel to wheel incidents. In junior drag racing, there are only two cars on track at a time, and they each have one huge lane to travel, and little to no steering is involved relatively compared to karting.

In fact, I’ll be honest with you. If I had a child and someone told me to put them in the safer motor sport, I’m going straight to junior drag racing. (Ironically enough, in the professional ranks, when these dragsters are set free of limitations they often exceed them and can easily get out of control.)

In the end, this theory has some repercussions. First of which, is that parents may be encouraging their little girls to go drag racing rather than karting because it may be safer, or at least seems that way. So, if that is true, there’s a bit of sexism from those parenting decisions, which means that the females that make it through to the NHRA are actually a part of sexism, not some repudiation of it. Crazy, I know, right? Although considering the recent deaths in professional drag racing, the women who are there surely know of the risks, and sexism in that sense is non existent.

Here is another crux of the issue. If my theory is wrong, and it most assuredly is, then that doesn’t help the NHRA either. The reason is because women’s entry into the NHRA has other possible connotations, which few are good.

One of those reasons is the publicity that my friend described. Ratings? Good looks? So, what kind of “talent” are we talking about then? If you then tell me that it’s a family affair (“my father was a drag racing king”) then all that does is alienate everyone else who climbed through the ranks as many of the other drivers have.

In the end, this is about an honest discussion regarding talented drivers, and proper teams. Why anyone even has to wonder how Sarah Fisher struggled through the Indy Racing League while Danica Patrick has not is simply, sad. Patrick has the team to win now, while Fisher never did. In fact, this year Fisher - committed to the Indy Racing League - has started her own team (aptly named Sarah Fisher Racing) to compete at the Indianapolis 500.

Englishwoman, Katherine Legge, has all but given up racing in America, and has started competing in the German Touring Car Series (DTM). And she is just as accomplished, if not more so, as Danica Patrick.

If women get attention in racing solely from assets that have nothing to do with their driving, then most women will continue to find it hard to break through. But, if my theory is right, then maybe we have the ability to change how women’s capabilities are perceived generally, and their possibilities in varying forms of motor racing.

What a Vote Could be For

2008-05-05T07:00:00.001-04:00

Pundits are at it again. This time, Paul Krugman writes, "working-class Americans do vote on economic issues — and can be swayed by a politician who offers real answers to their problems." Now, it's not that I'm a cynic in thinking that most working class Americans don't vote on economic issues. But here's the thing - they don't know how to vote on economic issues. The old adage of "focusing too much on the trees so that you can't see the forest" applies.

And that is not to say working class voters lack the ability to think these polcies through. However, working class voter don't have the time to learn global and development economics for three months every four years when it becomes the subject du jour. All they know is that working gives them money to buy things. If their job is under threat, and it can be explained by illegal immigrants or cheaper labor elsewhere, then that's how the debate will be framed.

What is so important about framing the debate? Dani Rodrick once explained how Tyler Cowen and others forget that, "Food importing countries are food scarce countries, and as they open up to trade, the relative price of food falls. But if you are Thailand or Argentina, where other goods are scarce relative to food, freer trade means higher relative prices of food, not lower." But even then, to the regular American, that means lower prices. And since our jobs, and our price of food is important to us, then who cares if that tiny country has to pay more for its own food.

And even in food production there is a catch. As has been discussed before by msyelf and others, subsidising ethanol has created unforseen (to most politicians and the general public) price increases in food.

And it's not that Krugman gets the facts wrong entirely. Mainly, he misses the message, or, maybe Krugman is so involved in his own policies that he fails to see what Americans who vote for Obama are telling him.

Like here, Krugman seems to have forgotten to remind himself that there is a war going on. When supporters, and pundits alike, talk about "change" this election cycle, they are speaking on the grounds of changing the way our executive branch runs things, or if it should be running everything to begin with. It's about moving away from authoritarianism, and last time I checked, that authoritarianism is what most critics espoused of the Clinton administration.

Moreover, considering that the Iraq war is as draining as it is, then why not provide any background on a place where presidents have the most clout? Such as, foreign policy. At the latest Democratic debate, Clinton was far more assertive in saying that an attack on Israel could be considered as an attack on the U.S. Maybe our citizens don't want any such a foreign policy. Maybe a change in that paradigm of foreign policy is the change that Obama keeps talking about.

Maybe it's that change that Obama keeps talking about that will get people involved actively again politically. As I've said before, America really is active citizenship. Complacency allows others whose agendas you may not agree with to take hold of policy right from under our noses.

While Krugman might be able to get away with this kind of cynicism on regular readers, he won't get away with it from everyone. Right now, Senator Clinton is making sure she will do whatever it takes to get the nomination. So, simply saying that it's okay because what would happen in the fall campaign to Obama is much worse, is, by definition, cynical. And frankly, guess what, that type of politicking is another item that Obama is referring to when he discusses change.

And Krugman gets away with this kind of stuff because nobody cares to check and see why voters like Obama. Once again, it's the media telling us what to care about. I think a lot of the politically active citizenry still think authoritarianism is the big issue. Too bad, because today the media tells us it is the economy, which is one of the items the President cannot do much about.

South - You Are Here

2008-05-03T11:25:00.001-04:00

South is also out with a new album, entitled You Are Here.

With their last album, Adventures in the Underground Journey to the Stars, South departed from the string arrangements that played so heavily into With the Tides. Well, there is no return of strings, but the ability of Joel Cadbury, Jamie McDonald, and Brett Shaw to come together and make large alternative rock soundscapes has not escaped them.

Below is the video for their single from the album, entitled "Better Things."

Blondfire - My Someday

2008-05-03T10:51:00.002-04:00

Blondfire is out with their new album, My Someday . If you had heard their debut EP, Don't Whisper Lies, then this will come to you as a natural progression of that sound, which mixes electronic synths with standard pop rock accompaniment.

Bruce and Erica Driscoll (brother and sister) have an ability to arrange music that takes you back in frame of mind while providing you with the feeling of a new sound. They have also released two other EPs between Don't Whisper Lies and My Someday, and the only track to make the transition to the new album is the obvious single, "L-L-Love." However, don't let that deter you from their other EPs, especially their iTunes acoustic EP.

Here is hoping that their fans will not have to wait as long before they come out with their next album.

Below is the iTunes acoustic EP version of "L-L-Love."

Local Endorsement

2008-04-18T19:47:00.001-04:00

After months of wading through the national campaigns of various presidential candidates, most of whom are now in the great category of "former presidential candidate," I have focused my attention locally, for governor of Delaware, Jack Markell, a Democrat.

Consider that Delaware's Libertarian party is paltry relative to Libertarians nationally. As well, many local libertarian parties find a lack in support due to the fact that state and local governments have the ability and right to operate in a different manner; which is why you hear many libertarians on the national scale saying things like, "that is a matter best left at the state level." Even then, a proper libertarian would not be able to ignore Jack Markell. From a candidate, I ask not for complete laissez -faire policy, but rather an honest approach to governance. You want health care for all? Fine, tell me how much it will cost, and how we plan to pay for it.

As State Treasurer in Delaware, Jack Markell has a keen sense of the possibilities of various programs, including a proposal for statewide health care. At some point, an honest discussion needs to be had regarding what the priorities of the average citizen are, and what we are willing to pay to make these priorities happen.

When Jack Markell endorsed Barack Obama, it became clear that Markell was a candidate who got it. In the times that I have met with Jack Markell, he has proven himself able and willing to speak on certain issues, and in certain places, where normally, any other politician would skirt around.

In a country where only half of those who can vote, do vote, it is obvious that the apathy towards politics has led to an inactive citizenship. Almost naturally, political apathy has been taken advantage of by many. Instead of policy arguments, or any forward thinking in speeches, we have seen fear mongering and scare tactics.

Improving Delaware at multiple levels is part of an idea of government that requires active citizenship. An active citizenship paradigm thinks not of the average citizen as an obstacle to be obfuscated, but rather as a peer and neighbor to work and be involved with. And only when there is someone willing to be honest about issues on their own merit, will such a paradigm exist. That someone is Jack Markell.

*****

Here is the latest Delaware Gubernatorial debate (on education) where I have taken the liberty to upload each part to YouTube.

Part 3

While the NHRA Tweaks...

2008-04-16T19:23:00.001-04:00

For those not aware, in the NHRA (National Hot Rod Association), it's not as easy as it seems to set the record for fastest speed, or time to travel a 1/4 mile. By the way, the record is currently held at 4.428 seconds by Top Fuel driver, Tony Schumacher, whose feat was accomplished in 2006.

Now, while your first thoughts are to discuss the sheer physics in the accomplishment of traveling down the 1/4 mile drag strip in under 5 seconds, that is not what I'm referring to exactly. In fact, most nitro fuel teams at events today accomplish that task often enough.

The challenge however comes from a rule that says the record must be accomplished not just by running a record breaking time, but by also having within that same weekend, run another time that weekend within 1 percent of the record setting run. I will gladly ask the question as to why this record setting rule exists.

The only reason I can come up for in terms of having to provide a "back up" run is to protect from some sort of fluke. However, I simply don't see a reason as to why the NHRA and its participants are so scared of a fluke. Even when chances are that the fluke will be run by a big name competitor (i.e. John Force, Tony Schumacher) anyway.

And that's really the only reason.

Maybe the rule is simply there because it's been there for so long. I know of no other sport that has a rule such as this. Do Olympic athletes have to have a track run in the same weekend that is 1% of their record breaking run?

Now if the NHRA says that it wants it there because it's what makes their motorsport different, then fine. It is their sport, and they can make rules for no reason whatsoever if they wish. But, they need to give me a reason other than the "fluke."

What of the "fluke" run though? What makes it a fluke? Well, the NHRA has four qualifying rounds. Rounds 1&2 are usually done Friday night, when conditions are generally better than the rest of the event weekend. So, there's a great chance of record breaking runs in a Friday night. If the NHRA doesn't want those Friday night numbers to apply, then maybe they should not run Friday night qualifying. Or, maybe they should tell people that Friday night qualifying numbers don't count for records.

Ultimately though, the idea of doing away with this rule would be there really for the sake of the fans, whom don't have calculators with them at all times to calculate 1%. I would bet $10 that good percentage of NHRA fans don't even know about the 1% back up rule.

The NHRA has proven with that it is willing to change. There is no need to look further than the recent change in the points system. They are also continuously tweaking the bike class in order to keep them competitive. "Wow, it looks like your brand of bike is really starting to gain some serious speed. Here's some lead weight to keep you on the ground. What's that? It's not fair? It will slow you down? Not my problem."

It is obvious that they do this to keep the fans interested, so, one more way to keep the fans interested is to take out one more layer of unnecessary rule-bureaucracy, like the 1% back up rule.

MBAs on Policy; Economists on Dating

2008-04-07T19:58:00.002-04:00

If I had a nickel for every time a psychologist has written a column falsely pigeonholing economists with other MBA and business graduates, I would be rich. Let alone, the money I would make from having a nickel every time these two disciplines got something wrong about each other.

In this post from Psychology Today, this is what was written regarding economists:

Only economists would be so blind.

I think that's a bit of an overshoot. From the abundant literature that we are seeing from economists today (e.g. Freakonomics, Undercover Economist, The Logic of Life) an economist would not make the error Kanazawa explains. A mid level manager, or another business discipline would make the error described below.

So, what was the error? Well, let us proceed to the part where I, and most other economists, excel beyond your typical business graduate. By the way, before you start writing your hate mail to me, let me first state that an economist would not do a litany of other things as well as other business graduates. I'm sure those graduates have plenty of examples, so go ahead and fill the comment box if you so please.

The error came in a policy implemented for customer service sake at a supermarket. Essentially, the cashiers were supposed to start making eye contact with the customers while thanking them for shopping at that particular supermarket. However:

However, the policy backfired when the employee was female and the customer was male. When the female employee gazed deeply into his eyes, smiled, and thanked him by his name, the male customer “naturally” assumed that she was attracted to him, and started harassing her by following her around on and off work. In other words, many of the male customers turned into Beavis and Butt-head. Eventually, five female employees had to file a Federal sex discrimination charge against Safeway to force it to stop this policy, which the supermarket chain did when it reached an out-of-court settlement.

So, where am I being proven right? My so called "pessimism" on the ease of dating and asking complete strangers out for a date. What a crock. As much as I hate to admit it, New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman goes through the same thing with his op-eds. Krugman had been warning of asset overpricing in housing (real estate) for a while, but people merely scoffed at him as "pessimistic" when he was just stating observations on facts. Just as mortgage companies would scoff at people who wanted a fixed rate mortgage and reply, "Get an adjustable rate mortgage. It looks scary now, but you could always just refinance this loan later. The value of your home will only go up."

Just as people and friends scoffed at me when I would speak to them on the game theory possibilities of dating. Unfortunately, no one would listen when I would explain to them how having a relationship was like making a personal contract with someone. Nor would they listen when I explained that the market for finding people out there is not as easy as it sounds. People everywhere are looking for things specifically, whether it be no relationship at all, or a relationship with the most stringent qualifications ever made. It's these intricacies that make online dating sites, such as eHarmony, so popular. Essentially, the website is supposed to sort through all those variables for you.

When I posted about those stringent qualifications before, I was lambasted for being so self-deprecating. While the humor was self-deprecating, that is/was not the issue. The issue is that everyone, in their own personal quests for optimism, simply for the sake of optimism, fails to see the intricacies that make life the adventure that it is. It is those intricacies that make economists able to write entire books on items that we identify and write off as everyday life. And it is those intricacies that make people so selective about whom they will choose to spend the rest of their lives with, let alone one night for a date.

So, there are economic parallels with dating. And it is true, as Kanazawa explained above, that men can easily get the wrong signals from women, which would mean that obviously economists have a better knack for thinking about how life works. Maybe that's because economists aren't afraid to delve into other specifics of academia, such as psychology, neurology, and biology.

I mean seriously, what other profession would have the guts to tell you that an engagement ring is simply a non-refundable deposit to be worn on the ring finger? I mean, that is what it is, right? Either that, or we all have some explaining to do about how and where true love is represented.

The Black Keys - Attack and Release

2008-04-03T21:29:00.001-04:00

The Black Keys released their latest (fifth) studio album entitled, Attack and Release. Their latest creation has been produced by Danger Mouse, and let me be the first to say that his production hand is evident.

While the change in sound is not bad, nor is it an about face as to how Dan Auerbach and Pat Carney create and play music, the production value of Attack and Release shows. Some songs even have bass accompaniment, which if we can remember, only happened once on their prior four releases combined.

However, Dan and Pat still are the Black Keys, and there is nothing that can replace Dan's vocals, guitar, and Pat's drums. When you play this album, there is no doubt that you are listening to The Black Keys.

The real question is if their production collaboration with Danger Mouse will be done again in future releases. If so, or if not, you will still be able to find many tracks to adore on Attack and Release.

Here is the video for a track they seem to be pushing as their single, "Strange Times."

The B-52s - Funplex

2008-03-31T18:24:00.002-04:00

The B-52s are out with a new studio album, Funplex; their first album with new material since 1992.

Funplex was produced by Steve Osborne, and it was a great choice considering that the band wanted a bit more modern sound with programming involved. I was simply amazed when I first listened to Funplex, how the B-52s were able to keep up and not remain dated as many will probably try to in their reviews.

The album is meant to be fun, and it is. All tracks are up tempo, and rarely leave one without a smile.

Check out the music video, for "Funplex."

Bush's Effect on the Economy

2008-03-25T19:18:00.003-04:00

Is President Bush really at fault for the current state of economy? I cannot be sure, but I am willing to propose a deal. I'll assign blame to President Bush if he continues to espouse claims that he is responsible for the economic growth that we had since 2003.

Here is a post from Dan Froomkin showing a cornucopia of articles that have recently been written regarding President Bush and his economic policies. Moreover, the sampling of articles shows that the president has taken credit for the economic growth that followed after the small recession in 2001.

But what does the President really affect? Well, Robert Samuelson answered that question here:

We have a $14 trillion economy. The idea that presidents can control it lies between an exaggeration and an illusion. Our presidential preferences ought to reflect judgments about candidates' character, values, competence and their views on issues where what they think counts: foreign policy; long-term economic and social policy -- how they would tax and spend; health care; immigration. Forget the business cycle.

So, where does the President fit in to our current predicament? Well, if you are looking to assign blame to him, the best you can do is to exclaim that President Bush has once again been inept in at least the rhetoric towards our economy. In order to make sure that he does not give a "Malaise Speech," President Bush has provided a continuing rosy picture. In essence, our president has risked his personal image of intelligence - or whatever was left of it - in order to not be blamed for affecting consumer confidence, or be blamed for being pessimistic as Carter was.

Unfortunately, avoiding a nation's gripping concerns does not help. Also, from what I can see now and in the history books, our country could still stand to grow more in hearing bad news, and deal with larger problems as adults and active citizens. Barack Obama's campaign is essentially revolving around that theme of active citizenship. If Obama is elected, maybe our mindset as citizens will change in how we tackle problems together as a nation.

One thing that an election of President Obama, or Clinton, or McCain will not provide is immediate economic relief. While the President can help push, or veto, certain bills regarding spending and taxation, an economic downturn that is spurred continuously by a lack of confidence in the recent securitization of mortgages is not something that this president, or any president could have been responsible for.

And even then, why all of a sudden now, do so-called "Republicans" start acting and speaking as if they were Democrats? A large collection of officials have jumped to the fore in advocating the Federal Reserves need to help out the economy. Why jump the "invisible hand of the market" ship now? Well, as IOZ would tell you, those who are elected and espouse claims of their love of capitalism are not really selling you the idea of real capitalism. Rather, we tend to forget all the taxes on imported goods and agriculture, but that seems to be okay because they will tell us we are protecting our own interests. Even our own Federal Reserve system operates in a way that is not free-market principle. The Federal Reserves hand is anything but invisible in our market.

The machine of what we denote as capitalism is far too large to assign blame on one man, President Bush. But, maybe he deserves it. If he can say that the policies he's been pushing for our economy are responsible for the economic upturn after our short recession early in his presidency, which is a stretch, then how is he not responsible for the economic downturn?

In either case, we all still miss the issue that there is a war going on, and while wars help in the economic short run, in the long run, wars prove to be a drag on our economy. (Let alone the "soft power" costs of fighting an unjust war.) Now that definitely has people signing off on it. And at the top of that list of approval, is a man by the name of Bush.

Mike Doughty - Golden Delicious

2008-03-10T19:33:00.002-04:00

Mike Doughty is out with a new album: Golden Delicious. So far as I can see, it is a natural progression from what he has always been doing without the band backing of Soul Coughing.

Before I go on any further, I think it is imortant for us to realize that fans who attached themselves to Mike Doughty during his Soul Coughing days mistook a lot of the sound the band did collaberatively, as Doughty's sound personally. While Doughty's influence within the band were heavy, Doughty kept the sound of Soul Coughing to the band of Soul Coughing. This is evidenced by his demo of Skittish, which was during his tenure at Soul Coughing, but was a departure from the sound of Soul Coughing. However, with that said, people still hold onto those sounds as Mike explains here:

So the surprise which is no surprise is all the people saying that it's OK, but nowhere as good as Haughty Melodic. I joke about this all the time, but it's so bafflingly true: everything I put out, there's a general reaction of, Well, it's not as good as his genius ______, which he put out two years ago.
So all the terrible stuff I read about Skittish--why did he make that awful mistake of leaving the Soul C sound for the acoustic thing?--has turned into, Why did he leave the acoustic sound for the Dan Wilson vibe

With that being prefaced, Golden Delicious is a fine record on its own. "27 Jennifers" is the obvious single, but there are other tracks that I hold onto personally as I do with any other album, especially the track "Luminous Girl."

Here is the video for "27 Jennifers."

Hot Chip - Made in the Dark

2008-03-10T19:29:00.002-04:00

Hot Chip has done most of the work in explaining their latest album in the You Tube video below.

In my view, this album is even more eclectic than their prior two releases. And since this was the desired goal of their album; mission accomplished.

If you are looking for an electronic album that is rife full of syncopation and dissonant tones, mingled with catchy riffs, Made in the Dark might just have everything you are looking for.

What is Fair

2008-03-08T23:33:00.002-05:00

Is it me, or has Paul Krugman really gone to town on Senator Barack Obama? And is it not mostly because of the mandate in Senator Hillary Clinton’s health-care policy?

Now, before I go on, let me please state that I still admire and respect Paul Krugman. And, in fact, he has admitted that he would rather not write about such items, but write more along the lines of textbook economics. Moreover, I have to admit that when he is grilling Senator Obama, he is doing so on policy grounds. Or, at least, that is what he is trying to do.

But why does it seem so vicious? Why is it that when Sebastian Mallaby or Robert Samuelson discuss Senator Obama, their criticisms seem less attacking?

Some more caveats. Firstly, Krugman is the kind of man who prefers tackling opposition head on. That is to say, when you think the other side is wrong, you must call them out on it, even harshly at times. Obviously Obama's rhetoric has tried to go more toward the middle of the road. With that said, going towards the middle of the road brings us to another reason why Krugman is so stringent on Senator Obama. Because Senator Obama voiced his concern against mandates on health insurance, Krugman noted that Senator Obama was attacking Senator Clinton "from the right." By attacking Hillary Clinton "from the right," Krugman was noting that this would not help either candidate - and more importantly to Krugman, the health care plan - in the general election.

Yet, the tone of Mallaby and Samuelson differs from Krugman's. And I have to wonder why when I think of the disparity because Mallaby and Samuelson have raised valid concerns regarding Senator Obama.

What it all comes down to is why Krugman becomes silent when Senator Clinton makes an argument against Obama? Why is it okay for her to attack Obama from the right by saying that she and Senator McCain have more national security experience than Senator Obama? Once again, Krugman's arguments are not necessarily wrong, but he seems to miss the counterpoints. Whereas Mallaby and Samuelson make specific arguments against a ploy, tactic, or misconception, Krugman seems to not address the times when other candidates (i.e. Senator Clinton) do the same thing. So, he's not wrong, but I just get the feeling that I'm not being told everything.

And if I am not being told everything, I wonder what the average American is missing?

Displaying Foreign Policy

2008-02-17T19:45:00.002-05:00

Do we ever stop to think about the way we create our foreign policy? This is not an argument if what we are doing is right or wrong, although I - and everyone else - do have my opinions on that. Rather, how do we come to our policy conclusions, and what are the criteria?

Here is an illustration to help make my case, where Justin Raimondo wrote in The American Conservative regarding Senator John McCain’s positions on Iraq and general foreign policy:

It is impossible to know what is in McCain’s heart.

Maybe the paradigm needs to shift away from “thinking with our hearts.”

We need to realize that there is still a significant contingent of American’s who believed that Bush could look into a Russian President’s soul and see the good in him. Yet, when it comes to what we write in the newspaper, or what we say on talk radio, we have to use our head in order to stand resolute against all of America’s enemies.

Is anyone else other than me worried about that dichotomy?

So, why are we allowed to use our heart in some places and only our heads in others? At the end of the day the rhetorical nonsense is hypocritical and intellectually dishonest. At what point are we allowed to think with our minds?

The simplistic black/white, good vs. evil dichotomies that have been perpetuated does not help matters much either. And don’t think that I am the only person who thinks that this is a problem. Even people on the other side of foreign policy perspective think that the American public is not being told what all the relevant information and idiosyncrasies of foreign policy options. Here, around the 4:30 mark of the video is a clip of John Bolton discussing it with Jon Stewart.

So, then in terms of coming up with our foreign policy, maybe another question to ask is why our current government does not wish to disclose, or create discourse with the public on the real intricacies of foreign policy. Does our government think we are not smart enough to understand? Or, does our government not wish for us to know the intricacies because we may not agree?

And when we think about it that way, is that not as good a reason as any to make sure we think with our hearts? If we are thinking with our hearts, then it is all so simple, and we do not care what happens so long as the bad guys lose.

Unfortunately, sooner or later, the public ends up wanting to know.

Feeling the Pinch

2008-02-07T17:59:00.000-05:00

As you may or may not be are aware of, I was for the most part absent from writing in the month of December. The multiple reasons were all around the fact that I had recently been laid off from my [now] prior place of employment. But with new work comes new vigor to continue my op-ed work.

To be laid off is to be given a biased outlook on any reports that come out of the economic indicators from the Fed to ADP to the U.S. Treasury. If you have been checking in with Paul Krugman or the Economic Policy Institute, you are no doubt preparing bomb shelters and stocking up on large amounts of spam and yacht batteries.

However, as I mentioned, I have found work again. Maybe this is because my financial economic and accounting background lends itself to other industries other than housing. One would like to think that while the amount of lay offs has increased, the amount of people finding new jobs will not drop. However, for those in the housing industry whose jobs are specific (e.g. construction) the wait will depend on the housing market itself.

Why Krugman’s outlook is so gloomy is in the deduction that the consumer market in the U.S. revolves around our citizen-homeowner’s credit/equity lines. So, if the housing market starts to suffer, consumers will not spend as much and producers will have not have to make as much. Therefore, producers will lay workers off because they do not need them.

It’s funny when you think about it. Most modern liberal economists (you can include me if you would like) scoff at the idea of “trickle-down” theory. However, doom and gloom scenarios seem to always base themselves around a trickle-down path.

This brings us to another point, which is that there is a difference between those two trickle-down theories. When a right leaning economist talks about trickle down, usually they refer to the fact that if people spend money, mostly rich people, everyone in the economy will be rewarded, while left leaning economists shudder to think that making rich people happier is a virtue.

Instead, left leaning economists will probably write more about income gaps and the bad events that happen on the supply side of the market. What we don’t realize when we are reading this is that in some sense it is a “trickle down” explanation. But how do these items trickle down? Well, in our recent economic downturn, the amount of equity those homeowners had decreased when it was found that their assets (homes) were overvalued. Kind of like when you realize that your used Hyundai doesn’t have the exact same resale value as a Honda or, better yet, BMW. Well, once the prices fell, and the equity left, that did a few things.

First, loan defaults, then market write downs (write-offs), and finally market psychology. The loan defaults force those who defaulted to reign in their spending. However, that is not everyone in the U.S.; therefore the demand effect is pretty small on that note. Next came the market write-downs that banks and mortgage brokers made, which then affected the securities and funds that those loans were bundled under. When the losses start being reported to Wall Street, all those little people you see running around on CNBC go into “super freak-out” mode. When that happens, the entire market’s psychology is affected, and then you start to get a hit on consumer demand because most everyone’s asset value in the stock market goes down affecting the equity they have.

So, in the end, it’s all trickle down, and in the end, I lost my job too.

(By the way, I know some of you are going to grill me on how there is more to the loan defaults than just the simple fact that there are defaults. Let me tell you that I know this, but that is an entirely separate column. In fact, go look at Robert Samuelson, or Paul Krugman, because they have written plenty on how those loans were securitized and somewhat disguised under “AAA” status.)

Moreover, in the end, don’t let names like “Reagonomics,” “supply-side economics,” or “Voodoo economics” cloud your vision. To every economic story, there is a degree of supply and demand affecting each other, as well as the underlying prices and interest rates that affect behavior (demand) and the prices themselves.

Just a Little Something

2008-02-05T18:07:00.000-05:00

One of the items I’ve added recently is on the side of this blog. Through the many news and blog feeds that I read, I will denote a certain few that I would like to share. Those items will appear on the side of this blog.

As well, there is a separate feed for those news items in case you use a reader and don’t visit the actual blog page very often, but would like to see my shared news items.

One of the reasons why I do not wish to post every little news story that I come across is because I would like to keep my posts towards an op-ed path, and not get caught up in the mini-posts that are there just to link to something else.

An Economic Response to Vacation

2008-01-29T19:18:00.000-05:00

The following is a letter I wrote to my close friend, Kevin, regarding the chances of me taking a vacation in the summer after my having just started a new job, needing a vacation to actually rest, and the other constraints that actually go into having a vacation.

Kevin,

Regarding the amount of time I would have accumulated for vacation by the summer. The answer to that question is multi-faceted.

Firstly, in terms of actual time, I will not have much. To say that I would have none would be a lie. However, knowing that I will probably not even have a full week, there still are other issues.

In my experience, and with other empirical research (Daniel Gilbert comes to mind), it has been shown that when together with the same person, or group of people, for a prolonged period of time (let us say about a week), one's level of happiness decreases. "Happiness" of course may be loosely defined; however, the relevant difference in happiness – and in this case, decrease in happiness – is significant and makes the point. The reason why honeymoons and married couples fair far better, and may actually have a good time is because they have a "psychological reset," otherwise known as sex.

Moreover, I believe it is time we all were honest with ourselves and understood that the large pitfall of vacations is that it is work in disguise. This is mostly the reason why when workers actually end up coming back to work, they are feeling refreshed only in the sense that the work they were doing during their vacation had the possibility to provide pleasure. Empirically, this can be seen easily with families because the parents have to work hard in order to make sure everyone is happy. Scott Adams once noted that it was like, "trying to solve a rubix cube 10 times a day."

Also, during the instances when vacations do not include much effort, they usually cost vast amounts of money. In the example case you have proposed to me, it will cost money. Money, which I am not sure I will have.

So, in summary:

- Time is a commodity that I don't know how much I have of.
- It will still take money to go do this.
- No sex.
- Friends may drive each other insane over the course of a week.

Remember to keep in mind that vacations are wonderful and necessary, but when we look at vacations from outside the box, we can see where the pitfalls of some "normal" vacations lie.

What the Economy Needs

2008-01-20T15:23:00.000-05:00

I have been asked lately for my ideas on when the Fed would lower the funds rate, and essentially the effect it would have on the economy. I have no doubt that many people have been asked this question, however there a few main points to be considered and that a few economists have touched on.

In the simplest terms, the idea behind a lowering of the fed funds rate is for the incentive to hold money in the bank to be so low that many people (mostly investors, or rather, investment banks) will use the money. The use of said funds is then said to spur on spending for capital (jobs and the like) in the economy.

Does it work? My best guess, maybe. But, along with many others like Kevin Hall at McClatchy Newspapers, Milton Friedman – whom Hall mentions, and other economists always want to point out is that using monetary policy (the federal reserve and its funds rate) and fiscal policy need to be thought about simultaneously. That is not to say that one cannot use both of them at the same time, but merely to understand that they both have a probabilistic effect the economy.

Greg Mankiw posed that proper question just a few days ago. He wrote that if a reporter could ask any committee member on the fed any question, it would be:

If the economy now gets the fiscal stimulus being proposed (about 1 percent of GDP), does that mean that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates less than it otherwise would?

My follow-up questions:

If the answer to the first question is No, then ask, Why the heck not? Monetary and fiscal policy are two tools available to increase the aggregate demand for goods and services. The goal here is to prop up demand sufficiently to maintain full employment without causing inflation. If the U.S. government is using fiscal policy more, it should use monetary policy less.

If the answer to the first question is Yes, then ask, How much higher will interest rates be kept as a result of the fiscal stimulus? And is it really better to have a fiscal stimulus and higher interest rates than a smaller deficit and lower interest rates?

But let us not forget that the economy has a way of doing what it wants to do no matter the coaxing (simply think of how irrational our partisan political hatred can be). Comedian, Lewis Black says that the economy goes up and down and no one knows why. Well, to some extent, he is speaking truth because many economists are willing to admit that we don’t know where we are economically until an event has already passed us, and we have enough time to research the economic past.

Right now, your best bet to figure it out may as well be to bet…on Intrade that is. Even as much as people want put behind them the sub-prime mortgage losses that larger banks have written down losses on, there may still be more ahead of us. As Paul Krugman and Robert Samuelsson have mentioned separately, the falling asset prices on homes is the event to really worry about because we may not be ready for the shock as to how much we were willing to pay just because someone on the other side of the desk said, “Oh, well, home prices will continue to rise, and you can always re-finance.”

I hate to say it, but Krugman’s doom and gloom scenarios may have some possibility to them after all, and if so, things may have to get worse before they can get any better.

F1 and WRC 2007 in Review

2008-01-13T22:31:00.000-05:00

If you were missed both the 2007 WRC and Formula 1 season, then you probably missed the two most exciting season’s within the last decade. All be it, there have been exciting moments before.

What has happened in Formula 1 this year was a testament to what really is at the foundation of Formula 1. All questions that any one person could have in what is involved in an F1 season had those inquiries fulfilled this season. While many feel that they have more questions than answers, I can truly say that the sport uncovered itself finally into what truly lies underneath.

The fans had what they superficially always needed, which is a driver’s championship completed as closely as possible. Not only that, but the man who ended up becoming the least likely driver to win, did win. Of course, I’m speaking of Kimi Raikonnen. He, with his 110 points, defeated Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton who each had 109 points.

On top of the close competition this season, the fans also were treated to something that they always salivate for, which is a rookie sensation. Luckily for those in Formula 1, most accounts have Lewis Hamilton as a well mannered young man with exceptional talent and grace. Hamilton’s disposition off the track is a true pleasure to witness and be a part of.

In fact, to my mind the closest thing to a slanderous remark I can recall Hamilton making is during the press conference after qualifying, in which he was held up by teammate Fernando Alonso for refueling, therefore costing Hamilton the ability to complete one more timed lap. When Peter Windsor asked how much time Hamilton needed in order to start another timed lap, Hamilton replied, “Probably the amount of time I had to wait behind in the pit lane.” And no one could discount the rookie for his feelings in that situation.

However, this season, fans and pundits have become critical on much of the business of Formula 1. Despite your opinion, and which constructor you cheer for, this season and the legal cases behind it have shown much more about how the FIA governs Formula 1.

Firstly, the application of punishments continues and will most likely forever be Draconian. When I and the rest of the world found out about the punishment against McLaren (loss of manufacturer points and a fine of $100 million), and its grandiose nature, I was appalled, but not in the least bit surprised. For those of us who hoped that the publicity of the decision would bear much stronger scrutiny onto the FIA in terms its future decisions in such matters, we were disappointed in the case and ruling for Renault F1 who was embroiled in a scandal much like McLaren was.

Renault’s case was at best, similar to Renault’s, and at its worst, a true espionage scandal. However, practically no penalty was assigned.

Also coming to light this season was the internal strife that many teams face with their drivers. Such problems are not new, but once again, I am surprised that the fans have been taken aback so much this season. As well, the espionage case against Coughlan and McLaren is not exactly something new either. Many engineers when they leave take knowledge with them. This is why when Mike Gascoyne left Toyota in 2006 he placed himself on gardening leave for the rest of the season. Therefore, when Gascoyne joined Spyker (now Force India) in 2007, Toyota could not excuse him of using information that was the property of Toyota.

Op-eds from GrandPrix.com have shown that there is now a consensus forming that when an engineer leaves a team, he may not take anything with him except for what he or she has in their mind.

In the World Rally Championship this year, it was a close driver’s championship. Albeit, both drivers streaked and showed the impact of what happens when a driver does not finish a rally. (It can be argued that Hamilton’s DNF this season cost him the driver’s title in F1.) The story was that as Grönholm’s luck changed near the latter part of the season, Loeb and Citroen struck back and one yet another World Rally Championship. In the constructor’s battle though, Ford easily clinched the title over Citroen.

Also in the news was the sensational driving of Grönholm’s teammate, Miko Hirovonen, and yet another Finnish driver piloting a Ford Focus, Jari Matti Latvala. Latvala performed so well, that he will be taking Grönholm’s seat in the 2008 season; as Grönholm is retiring.

For Subaru, it was yet another year of underperformance, bad luck, and intermingling reliability issues. They will have a completely different vehicle to work with in the 2008 season as the Impreza has been completely redesigned from Subaru.

Algorithms for Dating

2007-12-01T09:39:00.001-05:00

Tim Harford helps explain.

Political Fans and Sport Fans

2007-11-25T17:51:00.000-05:00

I believe when David Kuo replied to criticisms of his post in which he called the New England Patriots “cheaters,” he also made a parallel in terms of the paradigm that many citizens have with their own political party and politics in general.

My surmise at the connection is to relate the studies which show that when speaking in terms of politics, most people will simply forego rational responses, and as brain scans have shown, political thoughts deal more with emotional responses. Considering that all one would have to do to see the parallel with sports it to simply attend a sports bar, or go to a friend’s house to see a football game, then I think the point with associating sports and pure emotional thought is a very simple and obvious one to make.

So, when David Quo remarked that the Patriots are “cheaters,” he ticked off a few people. However, consider that their coach did illegally record the other team’s play signals. Is that not cheating?

I think what might be an important exercise is to understand the definitions of what certain parties are accused of. What is a “cheater?” What is a “war criminal?” Unless the definitions have changed, then aren’t the participants guilty?

Part of the reason as to why the rational section of the brain gets taken over is because of the perceived cost of and benefit of being a fan and taking a position. Consider that an individual’s ideological preference has more of a benefit than the cost for holding that belief. Bryan Caplan calls this rational irrationality. That is to say, there is a benefit to the person for holding an irrational belief.

One example I thought of was this: Since the probability of dying in a terrorist attack is so small, then holding a strong pro-torture position - which most likely creates anti-American sentiment that breeds more terrorists and terrorism – holds relatively little cost to the internal benefit of holding that ideological perspective. Therefore, since the ideological position holds so much weight for the individual, any effort to disagree with, or demerit the position will anger that person.

The hope is that with time, more and more people become aware of how emotional and irrational some of their paradigms can be. This is why even though I may not always agree with another economist, holding a conversation with them does not usually end in fistfights.

Of course, I may be wrong about mending these trends with sports. For some reason, people hold on harder to what they believe when it comes down to their local sport team. As Americans, we should simply be thankful for not having full-blown soccer riots.

Vocal Religious Fundamentalism

2007-11-17T22:49:00.000-05:00

The following is an email I sent to my close friend and psychological expert, William. His thoughtful and eloquent response to this email is here.

Hi Will,

This afternoon, I would like to follow up on my statement as to the sorrow that one should feel after watching Tuesday's Nova: Judgment Day. You said that you felt "revved up" in watching the law bring back a very controversial topic in terms of teaching Intelligent Design within the Dover, PA school district, however I ordered caution because of the locality and numeration of what I anticipated would be a very harsh reaction.

As I have rightly anticipated, there was a very strong reaction to the negative towards PBS, as seen by the latest Ombudsman column.

Yet by about a three-to-one margin, the long compilation of letters from viewers that appears below were critical of the program, charging a one-sided treatment, a bias toward evolution colored by the producers, and that it was insulting to believers.

Here is just one of the many emails sent in to Michael Getler, the Ombudsman for PBS.

It doesn't take a "Rocket Scientist" to figure out that if we, as humans, evolved from monkeys . . . THEN WHY? . . . Are there STILL Monkeys??? We were "Created" by God!!! Pull up AOL now and you'll notice the Gov. of Georgia praying for rain, (No Doubt to GOD). When 9/11 happened what did every good neighbor do? PRAY. Not to monkeys . . . To our "Creator"!!! It shouldn't take tragic and desperate circumstances for people to realize this fact!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!! In GOD We Trust!!!

Sonya L. Johnson, North Port, FL

Once again, I, like Sam Harris, must ask you why you feel revved up about the Dover, PA decision while such a strong constituency has goals of turning our country into a theocracy. What is more, is that while fundamentalist Christianity can be argued as being a minority, many have admitted that the religious moderates are as much to blame for their lack of confrontation fundamentalism, and thereby allowing it to control the discourse of the U.S. public image.

Also, of an ironic nature, those who would so quickly take the United States to war against the theocracy of Iran would also just as quickly make our country a theocracy, just Christian, not Muslim.

I put the question to you, how do you think we will avoid war? Who are those of "cool" disposition, and how much of our discourse do they control, as opposed to war hawks and religious fundamentalists? I would like to hear how the U.S.' current theory of presidential powers prevents one of those of vocal minority to do as he pleases? Does our current theory of presidential power prevent anything?

The Achievement Gap, The NCAA, and Us

2007-11-16T20:38:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, over at Science Blogs, Chad Orzel wrote:

Is it a good thing that only 52% of Maryland's black male athletes graduate? No. But the real tragedy is that only 54% of Maryland's black male students graduate. We should fix that problem first-- by improving public education so that students from poor and minority backgrounds come to college with the tools they need to succeed-- and see if the athletic graduation rates don't take care of themselves.

But it's easy to write self-righteous editorials blasting high-profile sports programs for their academic failings, while fixing the class and race problems of American education will cost real money, and require actual work. And nobody wants that.

I spent some time thinking over the reports that Orzel used to make his point. I make no claim to disagree with them whatsoever. Moreover, I do not disagree with Orzel on his point either. I myself have written in regards to the black-white achievement gap multiple times. The achievement gap is real, and is a cause for wage disparities and other socio-economic issues that impact our country.

However, I still stand by the piece of George Will wrote on the NCAA a few months ago. If the goal of the NCAA would be to further encourage the mission of the student athlete, then I would find it dishonest for anyone to think the 55% graduation rate that Will cites as anything worth of a passing mark. That is to say, I still believe the NCAA to be coming up short of its mission.

Nevertheless, the black-white achievement gap is and still should be the priority to eliminate.

Perhaps Chad Orzel felt that the attention has started to shift away from the achievement gap. With that most likely being his motivator, then Orzel’s post is commendable. Yet, I believe that it is still important to note that a graduation rate of “55 percent of football players and 38 percent of basketball players” is deplorable (taken from George Will’s op-ed).

Since the percentage of NCAA black athletes that participate in the “revenue sports” (football and men’s and women’s basketball) has usually hovered around the 50% mark (the literature and statistics for that can be found at www.ncaa.org), then there is a possibility that the numbers cited by George Will can be affected by the black-white achievement gap. With that in mind, perhaps the NCAA could soon garner some motivation and support to help tackle the black-white achievement gap for itself.

In any case, the achievement gap is real, and I think for the NCAA to continue to laud the student athlete is dishonest when the statistics behind it show that there’s room for improvement.

Orzel hinted at something else when he closed his blog post. He noted that there may be unwillingness for the public to address the achievement gap, and I believe Orzel to be right. There are cultural implications at stake here. Even over at the Freakonomics blog, Steve Levitt will mention his colleague, Roland Fryer, who continues to work on socio-economic issues, such as the black-white achievement gap. Again, Fryer has surveyed students who denote that being smart is “acting white.” Even recently, Levitt reported that Fryer found the latest euphuism to be “acting Asian.”

When anyone talks about having gender roles or seeing stereotypes forced upon others, then perhaps racial roles and stereotypes are themes peddled on by corporate marketers who choose to make products and profit based on those roles, which our culture accepts.

As someone with libertarian leanings, I hope that people will continue to step out of their own stereotypes, and the stereotypes imposed upon them by others. My hope is that with time, people can choose to be smart for themselves, rather than seeing the roles as fixed.

Revolt!

2007-11-12T18:52:00.000-05:00

A friend from my college years is teaching in France, and had this to comment on a current student strike:

I think the best thing that I saw today though was the group of students who have started an anti-protest protest! I was handed a flyer when I walked onto campus and thought it was an announcement about the newly blocked buildings, but it actually read something more like this:

The Committee of the fight against the strike

Any student, French of foreign, has the right to go to class.

Whether for or against the university reforms, attending class is a non-negotiable liberty.

This LIBERTY must be respected.

The anti-strike group is protesting against the hostage of students by a small group of agitators.

This is why I have a deep seeded respect and love for France. They will have a revolution over anything. If I were to provide a pop culture metaphor to describe the French’s political activity, I would say that there democracy amplifiers have been turned to “11.”

Whether their paid for schooling yields better results than American college counterparts, I think that matter is up to debate.

A University's Secret Curriculum

2007-11-09T20:57:00.000-05:00

A friend emailed me this link that shocked my libertarian leaning conscience, where we find that my alma mater, and former employer, had been trying to “educate” students through the University’s Residence Life Staff. Since the current president of the University made a statement declaring that the program would be shutdown, I believe it safe to assume that the program was in effect to some degree.

Now, what do we mean by, “Educate?” Essentially, Residence Life staff members, and most likely Resident Assistants – which is the position I held, and furthest down on the totem poll – were given a curriculum base for their residents. That’s right, while they are students at the University and already take classes all day, now the RAs had to administer new curriculum for the residents to learn.

The curriculum was based on the following (further explains and opinion can be found here):

A re-education of students on various social issues.
A mandatory participation basis. (While I would not see that expulsion from dorms as a possibility for a resident not attending, the RAs were in a sense being forced to make residents by means of performance reviews and such. Although, new testimonials are heading more towards the threatening possibility.)
Essentially, the outcome would lead to a view of society that sees whites as privileged, and all minorities (based on race, sexual orientation, or gender identification) as marginalized.
By changing the student’s paradigm, the University’s goal would be students who were more egalitarian.
Also, those goals included having students who would end up making pledges for whatever causes the complex in which they lived set out.

If you are not sure where to begin with what is wrong in the program, don’t worry because I am not sure where to begin either. To put it differently, the University of Delaware essentially played the old, “My house, my rules,” card. There are a few things wrong with that, firstly which is that the University is not the parent of any of these students, and most of the students are over 18.

Why would a university hide its own curriculum? Even in some of the supporting documents, this is described as a curriculum. So, why is it coming out of Residence Life? You would think that being that there are so many other students in the University, maybe there could be some sort of requirement for a class on the brief sociological history of the U.S. and the world, which could cover topics ranging from sexuality to socio-economic, and racial concerns. Of course with that, the problem would be that the classes were mandatory. We have to remember that people are paying for this. As well, with that said, they are not paying for re-education on social issues from the University’s Residence Life apparatus.

Even then the point of this curriculum was not for education sake, but for making students conform to a paradigm that was already set by the University’s Residence Life arm.

Another problem with the curriculum is that Residence Life decided what the answers to the problems were, and based the education around that. Normally, especially in a higher education background, when ideological problems are given, it is up to the individual to make up their own mind on what they think is right or wrong, and what they want to do about it.

At the core of this, and apparently at the cause of FIRE.org, is the topic of personal liberty. It is a right of every citizen in our nation to espouse whatever stupid, false, and distasteful sentiment they wish. Forcing the students to go through a re-education is the sort of Orwellian doomsday that we all think laughable, but was apparently under way.

Such a program may as well be the affirmation of theocracy and in this case, a secular theocracy. The lack of individual liberty with regards to people’s opinions (however misinformed) is the antithesis of a liberal democracy. At least Jerry Falwell’s college is honest about the misinformation it portrays. And by the way, I still resent the fact that he chose the name, Liberty University.

This is probably the most secretive, and yet seemingly unsubtle form of manufacturing consent I have ever seen. In my experience, college students for the most part live and operate in a bubble that envies President Bush’s. Again, why was this made curriculum? Why was this kept secret in the sense that it was unannounced to residents for what it really was? Why was there such a strong effort to mandate that residents participate? This is at best, disturbing, and at its worst the plot of some sort of Bond villain.

And while I write this article, something of actual substance, that could of deserved the support of such an “open-minded” Residence Life Staff at the University of Delaware, actually hit the floor in the House a few nights ago, and passed. Up until the bill was passed, homosexuals were not protected from discrimination in the workplace while other minorities were. Please listen to someone who really cares about the topic, as opposed to having someone “re-educate” you.

(If you click on the link and follow towards Barney Frank’s speech, take note that he is trying to expose a tactic that the Republicans were using. At the time, Republicans were trying to tie in marriage issues into the bill - whereas the bill was really about work discrimination - in an effort so that bill would not be passed.)

Subsidizing Calories

2007-11-03T20:50:00.000-04:00

Rob Hotakainen reports for McClatchy Newspapers that most of the money that goes towards farm subsidies goes for the foods that are not good for us.

What perplexes my logic is trying to figure out why on earth we would subsidize a product, or commodity, that we purchase the most of. You want to complain about subsidizing, or giving tax breaks to oil companies, then what about subsidizing our calorie consumption?

One of the possibilities that come to mind of why we would subsidize something that so many people purchase is for the need to smooth out price shocks that may come within the industry. The only real problem with that is when the industry that is being subsidized makes continuous profits.

Republican Senator Pat Roberts is right though – I never thought I would say that – the real fault of obesity lies within the person making the choice. To argue about farm subsidies in terms of how it could make people obese is really sort of a stretch. Especially when there are much better arguments for reducing or eliminating subsidies.

Tim Harford mentioned something just last week regarding our choices and how the government or firms intervene in our lives.

For example, in many places of work, you have to opt out of the 401k savings plan. That is to say, you are automatically enrolled. What have we seen since? People like it. They are doing something good for themselves – saving money for future retirement - that would otherwise not have been done because the choice was pre-made for them.

Harford used other examples, including smoking in England, and the possibilities of the English government providing more incentives for people to quit. Of course, couldn’t we think about that similarly in the US with what we eat?

I guess the argument could go both ways. Maybe we could subsidize more nutritional foods, and then have people pay higher (less subsidized) prices for other fatty foods. I believe Tim Harford called this paternal libertarianism – he was not advocating it, but simply educating his readers on the term for what we are seeing. Essentially, there is still a strong prevalence for choice, but just that the choice is priced for the ideal of common good.

In the end though, I still have to ask why we subsidize all those foods? Where is the evidence of price shocks? Oh well, why buy the cow when the milk is subsidized?

Spotting the Trend of Online Social Networking

2007-10-28T19:15:00.000-04:00

This past week I have been quite busy in my day job, and the trend looks to continue this coming week most certainly.

Although, speaking of trends, I would like to use one of my more favorite segments from The Daily Show to further what I feel are the intricate issues of online social networking. What better way to make a point, other than satire?

Demetri Martin explains:

I'll get back with another column later next week.

Connected

2007-10-20T23:08:00.000-04:00

For those who read Economic Principals by David Warsh, every so often Warsh will show in his pieces an ability to construct the semantic connections that show how relevant something can be. I will be honest and say that it is a fancy way of playing the “Degrees of Separation” game.

In order to retain and gain some sort of relevancy with my friends, and acquaintances whom I think should want me to be great friends with them (that’s a joke), I will try and do the same sort of semantic construct that David Warsh does, but instead of economics professors or old newspaper firms, I will be using bands and individual music artists (hey, it’s the weekend). I imagine that this exercise will feel a lot like the lyrics to LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge.” In fact, as the lyrics of the song go, I will also be stating this knowledge as a show of my relevancy. Whether this attempt at musical elitism will pass or fail however, I think is a matter for Picthfork, or my good friend, Will, to decide (again, joking here).

To start, we’ll leap from the line with The Breeders, whom are probably best known for their album Last Splash, which contained the single “Cannonball.” The Breeders have had lineup changes galore, however, Kim Deal has been the main catalyst of the group and its leader. Now, while Kim herself is famous – even The Dandy Warhols wrote a song about her called “Cool as Kim Deal” – I will go with Tanya Donelly, who apart from having a solo career (I always dug the track “Night You Saved My Life”), was in the group Belly.

Belly was another alternative rock band in the early 90s, which by the way, my favorite track of theirs is “Feed the Tree” from their 1993 album, Star. Donelly left Belly in 1996, after which the band disassembled, as well. Fast forward to 2005, and Tonya Donnelly was working with Mark Eitzel. Eitzel has released many albums with the band American Music Club, as well as some solo albums, his latest being Candy Ass in 2005, which contained one of my favorite tracks, “Make Sure They Hear.” Prior to Eitzel’s 2005 release, in 1998 he worked on an album with the assistance of James McNew from Yo La Tengo.

Yo La Tengo once did a music video for “Sugarcube” that featured comedian, David Cross (you may remember him from the show, Arrested Development). David Cross also worked in a music video with another of my favorite bands, The Black Keys. In 2003, The Black Keys toured with one of my favorite Washington based indie rock bands, Sleater Kinney. Sleater Kinney once toured with the Blues Explosion and were mistaken as groupies, when obviously, in fact, they were one of the acts to perform on stage.

By the way, The Blues Explosion and Sleater Kinney had somewhat similar formats: two guitars, drums, and no bass player.

The Blues Explosion through all their years of releasing albums worked with many people. In their 1998 album, Acme, the track “Blue Green Olga” featured backing vocals from Jon Spencer’s wife, Cristina Martinez, as well as Jill Cunniff, from Luscious Jackson. For those who weren’t living under a rock in the 1990s, we can remember that Luscious Jackson had many hits and transcended a genre or two during their tenure.

And what will finally bring us back to the beginning is that Vivian Trimble, of Luscious Jackson, left the group in 2001 to do an album with Josephine Wiggs, of…you guessed it, The Breeders.

Back to economics and politics next week, enjoy the weekend.

More than a Minute

2007-10-17T19:33:00.000-04:00

Last time, I wrote about what influences there are in what we purchase on how we work, but have we ever thought about how we write, or express our thoughts?

In today’s society of 24-hour television news, 10-second online social quizzes, as well as social networking sites themselves, it’s a wonder how any observer learns of a situation, or a person for that matter, in a manner that is not merely shallow. Even in our emails, in business we have been taught that the proper etiquette is to keep things short and simple.

In the end though, the person who really has the interest has to keep prodding for more information. Why, even recently, I sent an email to a co-worker, and then had a reply telling me about policy of which I already knew. The email tried to explain to me that needed to see and sign the attached documents first. Well, those managers were on the distribution list, so there is the rub. And I find it quite disingenuous when you send something that is within policy guidelines only to have to read a reply to that very same message telling you that what you just sent has to be within policy guidelines.

Uhhh? Well, if what I sent was not within the guidelines, you could just tell me explicitly. Then again, they were within guidelines, so what would we even discuss? But people like their high horses, so let them ride.

But what if there was a different way? What if there was a better way socially, politically, and businesslike? What if thorough writing was first priority leading to encouraging – you do not have to require it – full responses that contain context?

The 24-hour news networks suffer the most. Since their goal is to keep everyone up to date almost every hour, they have to reiterate the same news pieces all day, with barely any addition to the story. And in case you thought that wasn’t bad enough, those stories get old. This situation is essentially what is meant by the phrase, “24-hour news cycle.” So, when these stories get old, they are discarded.

With that in mind, you can imagine how easy it can be for warrant-less wiretapping to lose its flavor for the average news viewer. And when you have an executive branch that can delay comment, action, and investigation, and can on top of that tell you that their executive privileges allow them do circumvent what we know as the law, or tell you that you are letting the terrorists win, I would be surprised for the story to go anywhere.

In fact, usually when news stories on warrant-less wiretapping do go somewhere, it takes a long time to come up with a report. When the report comes along weeks, or even months later, will anyone who is used to 30 second news clips bother to pay attention? Moreover, do they even know the report will be broadcast? What are the Neilson ratings for PBS’ Frontline? How do PBS’ ratings fair against NBC when it airs “To Catch a Predator?”

Some stories, no matter how important, lack the tangibility for people to provide the time out of their busy lives in order to make a difference. It may be because of this that some college students take up the cause. Unfortunately, some students are less educated then others, and you have the possibility of someone yelling obscenities for what seems to be absolutely no reason whatsoever.

So, instead of answering 10 second interviews for online social networking sites, write an essay about a topic important to you. Or, write an essay-autobiography describing what is important to you. If the paradigm were changed on what is required for giving people complete answers, we might actually get to know each other just a little better.

Influences

2007-10-10T19:19:00.001-04:00

As I discussed in my last piece, race does not look like it will subside anytime soon as a hot button issue With so many people accusing each other of racism for taking certain positions (e.g. many citizens don’t like affirmative action), it’s a wonder how anyone even dares to explore any topics regarding race.

However, the fear of being accused a racist has yet to take hold of Kerwin Kofi Charles, Erik Hurst, and Nikolai Roussanov, who wrote a paper entitled “Conspicuous Consumption and Race.” From their abstract:

Using nationally representative data on consumption, we show that Blacks and Hispanics devote larger shares of their expenditure bundles to visible goods (clothing, jewelry, and cars) than do comparable Whites….[W]e emphasize instead a model of status seeking in which conspicuous consumption is used to reflect a household's economic position relative to a reference group.

Should we get out the pitchforks and start storming university research centers? No, of course not. Remember that even though we are all American, a cornucopia of cultures exists. For one culture to be into cars or jewelry more than another should not come to a surprise.

So, Kofi et al. describe what they are observing as status-seeking. Or, as I have interpreted it, the disparity in consumption is a form of signaling.

But what leads to the disparity? Coming up with a hypothesis, I think this is part of a peer effect manufactured by the general media and black media to black culture. Using the music industry as an example, a lot of material from the rap genre glorifies and tantalizes about an excess life style. Within that life style are the visible goods that Kofi et al. describe.

An important note is to remind ourselves that to call these expenditures good or bad is judgment call that I think hardly anyone qualifies for. For example, a financial advisor may not look too highly upon such goods that hold very little equity and depreciate rather quickly. On the other hand, people’s own utility functions operate in such a manner that almost all of the time the purchases they make are for goods and services that they really want.

So, while my hypothesis above shows that a peer/media effect may explain the reasoning for what some could describe as fleeting purchases, the peer effect for work and co-workers may be an entirely different story.

In fact, according to a paper by Jonathan Guryan, Kory Kroft, and Matt Notowidigdo, the people with whom we work may not affect our productivity. Now, we are not talking about a team project, or anything of the sort, but rather simply who works around you. The study the authors organized revolved around the pairings made at a golf tournament. Their results show that player’s scores did not falter even if paired with a player who had a considerably larger scoring handicap.

So, while trying to showcase lifestyle may be a product of observing and imitating culture (life imitating art), it seems that when it comes to making money, our influences are constrained only to what works, and in that sense, getting the job done.

Forces of Habit

2007-10-02T19:32:00.000-04:00

Recently ESPN’s Jeff Perlman wrote a piece on the University of Delaware’s reluctance, refusal, awkward excuses, and non-responses to play Delaware State University

Perlman’s piece regards the incident as purely regarding race. However, the situation may be even more nuanced than Perlman lets on.

The school came to be in 1891 only because the men running the First State wished not to allow blacks into their grand university. Under the Morrill Act, a state either could open its public educational facilities to all peoples, or start a separate-but-equal school for blacks. Hence, Delaware State.

In the ensuing 116 years, Delaware has treated Delaware State not as academic/athletic brethren, but as a piece of gum affixed to the bottom of its loafer. Del. State is where the scary black people congregate, where "those" types of folk go to college.

The problem is UD v. Del State is more socio-economic than it probably is racial anymore. Yet, so many tragedies like this start out as misguided racial solutions (starting Del State in order for UD to remain an all white institution) only to become these habitual stances on how one regards another race and its institutions.

Moreover, a large part of UD’s 6% black student body is separated by the income gap from whites and blacks. To the point, Del State’s tuition rates are far less than the University of Delaware’s. So, unless we decide to subsidize more blacks to go to college, the numbers will stay the same. Situations like these are most evidently the reason why economists continue to study the black-white achievement gap with fervor.

Perlman’s article is wasted on football. Luckily for him, that is why he writes for ESPN. The bigger issue is the admissions department of the University of Delaware. Why is higher education only for some blacks, yet most whites? What are the separating factors? Surely couldn’t the University of Delaware release some of its decision making critiques?

Other questions that I have pondered before, but Perlman did not raise himself are: If the University of Delaware’s student body is only 6% black, how many students is that actually (keeping in mind Delaware State’s student body is smaller)? How many of those students are in-state students? And consequently, the same questions can be asked for Delaware State University. Since in-state students pay less, it is quite possible that the income disadvantage minorities face makes them less apt to attend the University of Delaware, especially when other schools may be financially equal, and with a better educational reputation.

If we want to argue about racism, fine, but maybe we should really be honest about what college football is about. Along the way, some of us have to stick to our principles, and I hope that at some point in the future, it won’t only be George Will. The white – black achievement gap is bigger than football because this involves the futures of many young students. If Perlman really wanted to focus on something in football that should be changed, what about the goals of the NCAA as George Will has discussed before?

How does the NCAA fulfill its proclaimed purpose of maintaining "the athlete as an integral part of the student body"? Only 55 percent of football players and 38 percent of basketball players at Division I-A schools graduate. The New York Times has reported that at Auburn, a perennial football power, many athletes have received "high grades from the same professor for sociology and criminology courses that required no attendance and little work." Eighteen members of the undefeated 2004 team took a combined 97 hours of those courses while at Auburn. Who believes such behavior is confined to Auburn?

My point is that the fate of Pearlman’s article was sealed before it was written. So much of what separates schools is in the price tag, and until we effectively reduce the black-white achievement gap, we will continue to bear witness to the University of Delaware’s racial composition and surreal attitude of playing Delaware State University as a…how did they say it back in the day…a peculiar institution.

Thinking Through Green

2007-09-25T22:26:00.001-04:00

Despite this political appeal, we argue that the standards have a cost in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. In particular, we show that an LCFS [Low Carbon Fuel Standard] limiting carbon emissions per unit of energy (the energy-based LCFS) can achieve the first best outcome only under unrealistic assumptions. Moreover, we find that, contrary to the stated purpose, an LCFS can actually raise carbon emissions. Additionally, we show that the second best LCFS—from a regulator’s perspective—“under-taxes” all fuels and may require a nonbinding standard, i.e., the optimal standard may be no standard at all.

That is an excerpt from a working paper by Stephen P. Holland, Jonathan E. Hughes and Christopher R. Knittel. Reading through the simulated economic effects of environmental policy ideas becomes a difficult exercise. On one side, most everyone admits the externalities from carbon emissions exist and most likely harms long-term global climate. However, dealing with such global issues hardly warrants a “magic wand” approach to the problem.

No one policy can solve all problems. Moreover, having one policy simulated in best-case scenarios with maximum restrictions in place is not only improbable, but also unrealistic. Not even environmental regulations are always efficient. This is where policy fails us.

Once again, what we are seeing in the Low Carbon Fuel Standard is an attempt to affect the free-market. We try to adjust the market so that people favor low carbon fuels, but this essentially makes the price of low carbon fuels so low, that the public uses the fuel to the extent that we end of polluting just as much as we were before.

There is a caveat however. Fore example, giving a corporation a tax break that realizes record profits is not necessarily a logical maneuver economically, albeit logical politically. Luckily, if you did not know, congress has rescinded on those tax breaks. Such tax breaks are of the same ilk as subsidizing already profitable farms.

And if you think policy is the only place where we can get it wrong on the environment, you might need to think again. As Warren Brown recently wrote in the Washington Post, what do we do when the time comes to dispose of the large batteries that come in hybrid vehicles? What are the real costs of the entire hybrid vehicle from its length of life, to its ability for salvage and/or disposal? Rather, would it not be more efficient to simply purchase a small economical gas engine vehicle?

Instead of having these questions of policy and “green” life style externalities answered, and instead of having facts and numbers discussed, the public sees a grandiose delusion about how to “help” the environment. What happened to the good old days where reducing, reusing, and recycling were key elements in not only helping the environment, but also being efficient?

If you read Warren Brown’s article, you’ll understand what he, many others, and I have been saying for quite some time now. The public is simply not ready to discuss the real costs of reducing our use of oil, which would best come by the way of a gas tax.

Education for Whom?

2007-09-16T20:32:00.000-04:00

Have you ever stopped to consider why so many of our nation’s teachers go back to school to receive elaborate graduate degrees and even in some cases doctorates?

Well, whether they like it or not, Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor have answered that question by asking another question, what effect does having a graduate degree have on student achievement?

From the August NBER Digest, Linda Gorman summed the paper on graduate-degree teacher credentials and their effect on students educations. In the end the effect was put simply as, none.

According to Linda, the authors, like many before them, have gone through the statistics and found what their predecessors have found. What matters is not whether you have a graduate degree or not, but rather on your experience. (My apologies to all my friends who have become new teachers; I can only hope that you are the outliers in the data field.)

However, dare not think for even a moment that a teacher’s credentials are not correlated with how students perform in their classes. The authors have found that teachers whose credentials are weak have received disadvantaged students. This condition then leads to a further widening of the achievement gap that had been created by the students’ socioeconomic circumstances.

By asking the question as to what the effects of the teacher’s graduate education, the authors find that the motivations for attaining a graduate are plentiful. I believe increases in pay and better students/classroom environment would head the list for motive.

Is this truly the efficient manner to be taught? Should our most disadvantaged teachers consistently receive the most disadvantaged students? I emphasize consistently because there may be a need to provide incentives for teachers to take on these particular students. Quite possibly, the incentives may be misaligned. Perhaps more incentive should be provided to a teacher who takes on students who fall on the bad side of the achievement gap.

Conversely, the data suggests that teachers most likely receive incentive to attain a master’s degree so as to be pampered in how their future classes will be composed. That is to say, they go back to school not become better teachers, but rather, to get better students.

Economists have always spoken out on misaligned incentives, and this may yet be another case of such askew system. I am reminded of Arnold Kling’s feelings on the purchase of carbon offsets. The offset system in hardly efficient, and is an example of trying to eat a salad just because you are feeling guilty for eating cheesecake. That is to say, you are eating more and wasting resources all for the sake of one’s conscience.

Maybe it is time that the incentives for teaching were realigned so that taking on the students who need the help ends up being the fiscally rewarding. According to the data, whether a teacher has a graduate degree or not does not affect the student’s performance, so the other students would hardly be mal-affected since each teacher has to be qualified anyway. John Stossel may in fact be right; a more competitive, incentive driven education system could put the right teachers in the right places.

Games and Perception

2007-09-06T19:39:00.000-04:00

Dating has many variables in which each person plays in different ways whether we think about those decisions consciously, or sub-consciously. One specific type, I have linked to before thanks to Ben Casnocha.

What Casnocha did not know at the time was that his observation and reading of The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, by Neil Strauss would gain more notoriety even to the point where Stephen Dubner at the Freakonomics blog would make mention of it as well.

Dubner wrote entirely on the concept of “negging,” which Casnocha mentioned, but did not go too far in depth because he was writing an entire book review. Negging essentially is Neil Strauss’ term for providing what is not exactly an insult or a compliment per se, but rather an accidental insult, or a back-handed compliment. I dare anyone who is not a practiced pick up artist to try that.

According to Strauss and others, negging works. In fact, in the post Dubner wrote, he also cited research that showed many males will flat-out insult their partners in what is described as some sort of “mate-retention.” That is to say, the men make derogatory comments or insults so that their female counterparts will not (or never) have the confidence to leave them.

We can assume that any sane woman (please, don’t start writing me that there is no such thing; that joke has been done ad nauseum) would proclaim that “negging” is not something she would enjoy having done to her. On the other hand, the problem with that assumption possibility is that women like playing the game as much as men do, and would therefore want to be disarmed and “negged” to a certain extent.

As much as you can try, the game is never ending.

Also, how we look, and how we see ourselves concerns almost everyone. This post from Megan McArdle describes that we are not as hot as we think we are.

A cognitive scientist at the University of Chicago explained why to me last winter. When we look at ourselves in the mirror, in any given session we tend to anchor on the time slice image that makes us look our best. That, we decide, is the "real" us.

…

You're also biased by the fact that no one ever tells you you're ugly. It's not merely that people inflate what they tell you (they almost certainly do); it's also that people who think you're ugly tend to drop out of the sample. They may not cultivate an acquaintance with you, and those that do will probably not spontaneously let you know that they find you kind of repulsive.

You're stuck in a web of cognitive biases and a positive feedback loop. It's a wonder anyone does get married.

This phenomenon, believe it or not was discussed by musician, Mike Doughty, while looking at some self-portraits. He wrote that while he eyed over the photographs he wondered what had happened to the man whom he saw in the mirror.

Within our relationships, the differing perceptions and games played that come from you or other people continue to play pivotal roles no matter what their intended lasting value.

Defining Pro Market

2007-08-28T18:10:00.000-04:00

By now, most everyone knows of China’s recent toy making deficiencies. One of the stories from McClatchy newspapers cites President Bush as saying that he chose not to enforce stiffer production standards in China for the reason that such enforcements would not be pro-market.

“The overall philosophy is regulations are bad and they are too large a cost for industry, and the market will take care of it,” said Rick Melberth, director of regulatory policy at OMBWatch, a government watchdog group formed in 1983. “That’s been the philosophy of the Bush administration.”

However, considering that the regulations to be applied on China would be for the sake of safety, it is important to realize the parallels that could be shown to our president in order to illustrate how he may have missed the point of what “pro-market” really is.

Taking a close look at the automotive industry, many regulations have been enforced for the sake of safety. Yet, no one makes any claims that making seatbelts and air bags mandatory stifles competition. In fact, now auto manufacturers boast about the amount of safety their vehicles carry.

Pro-market competition really was not what President Bush’s comments were about. In reality, Chinese manufactures have to deal with the fact that they will have an increase in production costs in order to make sure their goods are in fact, good enough to be sold. Even if there were no regulation about lead content, then the free market is working anyway due to the fact that no one would buy the product. If it just so happens that people are afraid of China’s products; then China will have to deal with it.

In the same manner, home building, mortgage, and financial firm shares have suffered in the past month. Is the market being held hostage by some unnecessarily gloomy outlook on short to near term future? Well, you will not hear me say that it is not. However, it is in these conditions where those with a sane frame of mind calm themselves and look for opportunities where firms are now being undervalued.

With Chinese toys, with financials, and with homebuilders we are seeing a correction in market pricing, and a complete re-thinking of how the market prices risk. When China threatens retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. we have to remind them that their products are to blame, and that it is the consumer who will ultimately forgive them.

Making sure products are safe is in no way defeating competition so long as the rules and regulations are the same for everyone. Ideally, if consumers had information about all the products and their contents, then the free market would provide roughly the same outcome as a watchdog group taking products off the shelf.

However, sometimes people are not shown the contents of items, and as I have stated before, market failures are sometimes best fixed by an entity whose purpose is not profit. In this case, consumers may not have as much a voice in other countries as a U.S. trade representative.

At the Crux of College Diversity

2007-08-23T19:52:00.000-04:00

Vocal critique against bureaucratically sponsored diversity initiatives that come from most college campuses finds its motivation from events such as this linked by Andrew Sullivan, and further questioned by Ben Casnocha. In this instance, the college bureaucracy has lead to an organization taking three years to change its name to be more “inclusive.” Bureaucracy of this sort, and the amount of time wasted on a matter that most people consider trivial is what motivates George Will to continue his op-ed writing. The more government bureaucracy, the more reason George Will - and any person who believes in less government - has to write.

At the crux of college diversity, and whether diversity should be forced upon us with mandatory acceptance quotas, is the gap between achievements of blacks and whites (which I have discussed previously). Essentially, the idea is that the gap comes from a cyclical problem within children’s beginnings and the resources that they may or may not have at a young age. Of course, those circumstances are provided by the parents who most likely had the same, if not less, resources. Therefore, in order to fix the gap, the admission departments of institutions subsidize how many blacks go to college, thereby hoping they will be better off, as well as their children.

But the long road of college diversity does not end at admissions. Once we are in the door, trying to find a social/peer group is another story. For those thinking of fraternities and sororities for answers, Stephen Dubner, from Freakonomics, asked Sudhir Venkatesh, “How do you define a gang?” His response:

Great question. There are a few important legal cases where prosecutors tried to prosecute college fraternities as “gangs.” They suggested that the fraternity was an organization that existed to promote criminal behavior, such as the abuse of women and underage drinking. Most judges threw these cases out because they thought that fraternities were not, by definition, “gangs.” But judges rarely gave a logical reason for excluding (typically white) fraternities from the “gang category.”

Indeed, by any valid social scientific definition of a gang — “an established organization whose members come together for solidarity reasons and who engage in delinquent and/or criminal activities” — a fraternity most certainly qualifies. But race, as we know, can be a factor in shaping judicial outcomes.

What Vankatesh implies in the last sentence is that even in college (and assumingly all throughout life); race places a huge role, which certainly no one would dare argue. The recent studies that have gone on in the black-white achievement gap have important implications. By researching the gap, the goal is to start eliminating the gap early on in children’s educations, thereby eliminating the need in the future for blacks to “need” subsidies in order to receive admission into institutions of higher learning.

Even if the achievement gap is narrowed in the future, it’s unfortunately unknown if racial barriers will be completely eliminated. Nevertheless, showing that, all variables equal, blacks are just as capable as whites - without the kinds of subsidies that are provided by affirmative actions admissions - is crucial. As well, it seems that the mass public’s recognition of this may come in the same time that predominantly white fraternities will also finally be seen as gangs.

On What Grounds?

2007-08-16T18:45:00.000-04:00

Prior to the Rogers Masters’ men’s tennis final this past Sunday, I spoke to my friend Kevin on what the final could be like. The following exchange took place.

Kevin: I'm sure Federer is going to own that guy that beat Nadal. I mean really, a weekend in which you beat Nadal and Federer - you wish.

Me: Novak Djokovic has been a man possessed as of late. Really, just because he's been playing loosey goosey. As this year has been his break out year, for the Serb.

Kevin: He ain't winning today's match.

Me: I won't go that far.

For those that are not aware of the outcome of the match, Djokovic won.

Kevin is by no means a tennis expert, nor does his knowledge of the sport come close to mine due in no small part to my love of the game and keeping track of the professionals. But yet, Kevin disregarded what I was saying, and went with his position. This is much the same protocol that actually got us in Iraq and keeps us there.

Sure, the personal and global situations are a stretch to compare, but what is so different concerning the mindset? The answer: not much. In both cases, we have someone of a higher knowledge of the subject having his warnings totally dismissed. And what has made our steps in Iraq all the more worrisome is that the decisions made to go to war seem as nonchalant as picking Federer to always win a match.

Of course the U.S. military is the best, but no one made the public aware of the important caveats and intricacies of Middle East cultural rifts, sectarian strife, and cultural divides. Much of our own Generals’ advice was not heeded. General Shinseki noted:

Beware the 12-division strategy for a 10-division Army. Our soldiers and families bear the risk and the hardship of carrying a mission load that exceeds what force capabilities we can sustain, so we must alleviate risk and hardship by our willingness to resource the mission requirements.

I must catch myself however; someone did mention all the caveats of action in the Middle East. That man was Dick Cheney in 1994:

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. . . .

It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families -- it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?

Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

For those people who most likely do not watch The Daily Show, Jon Stewart confronted Stephen Hayes about Cheney’s past comments and how 9/11 didn’t change the consequences of invading Iraq.

What we end up seeing at the end of this is that the media is rewarding us to take strong stances. Whether the opinions are wrong or right is irrelevant, what matters is the unwavering expression of the opinion.

In fact, look no further than to Hillary Clinton, who still sees no point in thoughtfully addressing her votes for many authorizations of which Bush has asked pertaining to unwarranted surveillance, or authorization for the war in Iraq. Many other presidential candidates refuse to answer the question of going to war in Iraq “knowing what they know now” because, “the question is based on a hypothetical.” On the other hand, the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were just as hypothetical.

On a Personal Note

2007-08-09T18:54:00.000-04:00

In today’s op-ed, I would like to touch on a subject that I have in the past many times over: relationships and dating.

For you today, I do not have much in the way of new research, but I do have a personal note. Truthfully, this would be an effort at sympathizing with everyone in the world who dates. As I’ve stated before on this blog, dating is not a frequent activity for me, so once again, when I again went through the many signals, the feeling of hope for a relationship, and yet the eventual end, I had to realize that everyone else goes through this as well.

When I was speaking to a friend of mine last week that informed me of the amount of people he had to see before he met and started seeing the woman who would eventually be his wife, I breathed deeply in dread. The sheer effort that goes through continuously finding people whom you don’t like, or whom don’t like you is astonishing. I find it difficult for anyone out there who would not want to fool themselves into thinking they have dated more people than they really have so that they could inflate the number and psyche themselves into thinking “Statistically, the next one has a high chance of being the one.”

My married friends tell me that the rollercoaster of emotions does not get any easier because every relationship has its own share of emotional highs and lows. Nevertheless, what keeps a relationship together is good times far outweigh the bad.

Still, some relationships end (for good or bad reasons) because enduring it simply costs too much, either emotionally or otherwise, and the cost of disappointing someone ends up being trivial.

However, we all go through this together, including those that have to do the “dumping.” In fact, since most people believe in free will, this person who has to dump someone probably thinks to themselves that they have control over how that person is going to feel through the choice of ending the relationship, or not. I can imagine this is a burden no one would want to carry.

But who is letting go of whom? I recently spoke to my “masters degree in communication” friend Kevin on an unidentified communication theory that describes six perceptions of self:

The me that I am
The me that I think am
The me that others think I am
The me that I think others think I am
The me that others think I think others think I am
The me that I think others think of what others think I think I am.

So, not only are we dealing with another person, but we are dealing with our own perceptions of self and others. That is to say, even who I think I am, is not who I actually am. If this confuses you, don’t worry because hardly anyone thinks of this while they date, not even communications majors. A long story short, if you are perceived to carry a personality trait that you may or may not actually have, it does not matter; you may as well have it.

For example, if you have not had a date in years, and your timidity and nervousness are there for the sole reason of inexperience, your date may perceive your nervousness as an overall deficiency of your personality. Those are unfortunately, the breaks. Don’t believe me? Then why have men come up with silly rules such as, “Don’t call until two days are the first date”? These rules exist for the perception of power. What can be seen from this is that the power of perception truly lives, and if Scott Ginsberg has anything to say about it, you better know how to sell yourself, and do it quickly. In dating, it does not matter who you are, but who others think you are.

But for those of you who do what you can with whom you are as honestly as possible, it’s tough, I know, but you will get through it, and I certainly still believe that the free market of dating will take care of everyone in the end.

Tax The Carbon, Don't Trade It

2007-08-06T21:03:00.000-04:00

Once again, Sebastian Mallaby echoes Greg Mankiw’s sentiment that a cap and trade system for carbon emissions has some externalities that prove inefficient, at least compared to a tax. Mallaby describes the Kyoto effort that many countries have volunteered to take part in.

The takeaway:

The mechanism's clunky procedures are supposed to prevent fraud, but in practice they filter out village-based projects while not preventing fraud in big ones. As Stanford's Michael Wara has demonstrated in a devastating paper, the mechanism appears to encourage industrial producers to emit extra greenhouse gases so they can capture them and pocket extra subsidies. Chinese emitters make such extraordinary profits from this system that the government has imposed a 65 percent tax on the windfall. In effect, the green budgets of the rich world subsidize the Chinese government.

…

There are two snags, however. Inevitably, some voluntary carbon permits have proved fraudulent. They represent carbon reductions that have not actually happened or reductions that have been marketed as offsets to multiple purchasers. As a result, the voluntary market is periodically attacked, and would-be purchasers shy away. Voluntary purchasers buy carbon offsets to be pure. Impure scams defeat their objective.

There is a basic logic that has unfolded before us. As I have written before, one instance of our own market failure with the environment is the externality of degrading our natural habitats, as well as a host of other environmental concerns. If a natural market process can lead to such bad externalities, then why would creating another market for permits do any better? Moreover, the efficiency of cap and trade would pale in comparison to a carbon tax.

One of the possible externalities that comes from cap and trade is that if enough “good” firms trade or sell their permits to less environmentally friendly firms, there would always be a healthy, cheap supply for the less environmentally friendly firm to buy, which would lend that firm to pollute even more. Therefore, I would not be surprised if for certain regions, or locales, their pollution would actually increase. A tax on the other hand is constant, and when the proper rate is found, firms will not find it cost effective to pollute in excess. The only problem would be figuring out the tax rate.

One way to help the cap and trade system would be to consistently readjust and regulate the permit market. Decreasing the permit supply when firms are not polluting, yet making sure that there are still enough permits in the market to keep prices down, or production steady. On the other hand, regulating the cap and trade system beyond just tracking whom pollutes, but also needing oversight and regulatory forces for the market itself would be a waste considering that a tax would not need oversight for a market.

The reason why people like Mallaby, or Greg Mankiw recommend a tax structure is because if the system is made simply enough, we not only reduce overhead, but we also reduce externalities that would otherwise occur from a newly created permit market.

While many experts have stated their opinion on the matter, there is no easy solution, although the easier, more intuitive solutions seem apropos. However, maybe we could trial this within a region. In addition, each system could be reversed, adjusted, or replaced with cap and trade, or vice-versa.

In the end, the question is when will circumstances reach the point where we feel we have no other choice but to enact a tax or a cap and trade system?

Social Networking Sites Still Make Me Anxious

2007-07-31T17:57:00.001-04:00

Why am I still weary of MySpace and other social networking sites? Well, this article certainly doesn’t help matters. The takeaway:

The new figures Cooper announced Tuesday include only those offenders who created MySpace profiles using their real names, according to a document given to state lawmakers. But officials believe there could be more offenders using the site, possibly under fake names.

This article doesn’t help my confidence in having a face book profile either.

Ben Casnocha stated the ease of use in keeping tabs via face book thusly:

I'm fascinated to see what happens as my age demographic moves into college and then the workforce. Facebook reached the masses when we were in high school. We went to college with at least 200 existing weak ties from high school classmates, and in college we'll accumulate probably twice as many. By the time I graduate in 2011, I expect my average college friend will have at least 500 connections on a service like Facebook that are legitimate (i.e., genuine weak ties that resulted from some shared experience or interaction).

500 connections to people you went to school with. 500 people for whom you remember their name and interests with a little help from a social network. 500 people for whom you have updated contact information, location, and career status. At age 22. Society, in other words, is going to be flooded with the most networked generation ever.

Obviously, there are tremendous benefits to social networking. I mean, really, it is just so easy. Then again, the more people there are in the network, the more targets there are for identity theft. That is, unless you take out your birthday, you make your profile private, and you are selective of whom your online friends are. And if they really are your friends, then they should know most of the important stuff anyway.

I will admit that I am not the most thick-skinned individual, and with that in mind, to receive an invitation from someone you have cut ties with is one item I dread to come upon. But it has happened to my own friends (the real ones whom I speak to, not the online ones). My friends have relayed stories with me in which someone from their past puts in a “friend request” as they ponder to themselves, “They don’t remember what they did to me?”

But clicking a button is another easy thing about online social networking and online dating. The sheer ease and minute marginal cost to click a button in order to make a request for friendship or a date is most likely impossible to resist. Unless, you’re like me, and you abhor rejection no matter what the medium. One of my favorite lines in this regard is from the movie, You’ve Got Mail, in which case Scott Zahn’s character states, “As far as I'm concerned, the Internet is just another way to be rejected by a woman.”

While my good “masters degree in communications” friend Kevin would most likely explain that people might differ in how they participate online as opposed to the terrestrial reality I like to interact in, I still think that if you’re timid in the real world, a lot of that timidity would transfer to your “online persona”, unless you are lying, of course, to yourself and to others.

Forget Using Commas - No Need to Pause

2007-07-26T20:52:00.000-04:00

In The Washington Post, Robert Samuelson bids the comma a farewell, for which, even I will miss it along with other activities where we get to take a pause in life.

The takeaway:

It is true that Americans have always been in a hurry. In "Democracy in America" (1840), Alexis de Tocqueville has a famous passage noting the "feverish ardor" with which Americans pursue material gains and private pleasures. What's distinctive about our era, I think, is that new technologies and astonishing prosperity give us the chance to slacken the pace. Perish the thought. In some ways, it seems, we Americans have actually become more frantic.

This reminds me of how I touched on the same subject earlier here.

In my experience, not being married or having children, it still takes time to write a twice per week blog/op-ed while having my day job, and other personal hobbies. Our technology has given us the ability to be engaged in so many other activities and interests that it is easy to spread yourself thin. And if you book yourself with a well thought out schedule, you still might get burned out.

While I took a break from writing a month ago, I was still working my day job. And further to the point, please think about your friends and family who go on vacation. When there is a family involved, it becomes almost impossible to make it a “real vacation.” Let Scott Adams (creator, writer, and producer of everything Dilbert) explain:

So Plan B went into effect, and that meant continuously trying to figure out how to entertain eight very different people, ages 6 to 79, without everyone going their own way and defeating the purpose of the trip. It was like solving a Rubik’s Cube seven times a day.

Several of us have difficult preferences to satisfy. For example, I can’t be in the sun for more than ten seconds without bursting into flames. I fall sound asleep in any darkened theater. I’m a vegetarian, I require shaded temperatures between 68 and 75 degrees and continuous access to the Internet. Now throw the other seven freaks of nature into the equation and try to optimize everyone’s happiness without generating a slap fight. It can’t be done.

I still chuckle whenever I read that. I assume that at some point when I get too busy, I’ll have to discontinue this blog, but until then I have still have time to comment on the news, academic working papers from economists, and some of my other hobbies. I can only hope that the populace continues to have the time to do the things it needs to in order for their lives to be fulfilling. And in the end, that really does require a pause.

Blog Format

2007-07-24T20:06:00.000-04:00

Because I never stated my format before, I thought I would let readers know that they should expect my posts to come about once or twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) for my near 500 word op-eds. Other smaller posts and simple links will be thrown in sporadically. As usual, I will try to let you know when I take breaks.

The State of Iraq

2007-07-23T18:46:00.000-04:00

The great thing about the right to free speech is that you can make almost any comment you want, and refute any comment you want as well.

Although, I must say that when people use “pen names” in order to make snide comments, refute a piece of journalism or statistics that really sticks in my craw.

Take this piece of news from McClatchy Newspapers on July 10^th written by Mike Drummond and Mohammed al Dulaimy on the number of car bombs during our nation’s “surge.” “Air Force Guy” commented that the article was misleading and stated at the end, “You may not be interested in killing a radical Islamic terrorist, but there are several that are interested in killing you.” What kind of ridiculous platitude is that? What does that have to do with the article?

In the words of John Stossel, give me a break. I might as well just tell “Air Force Guy” that he may not be interested in tax reform, but that the IRS may be unfairly pulling him in with the Alternative Minimum Tax.

While anyone can argue against McClatchy’s calculation and use of their statistics – they use the first week of each month when insurgents and sectarian fighters in Iraq like to carry out their attacks - car bombs have still gone off in Iraq. Drummond and al Dulaimy state that the death tolls are still large and unacceptable.

They write:

The tactic took on a horrifying new dimension this past weekend when about 170 Iraqis were killed in five car bombs — as many as 155 of them when a produce truck laden with explosives leveled houses and shredded bodies in Armili, about 100 miles north of the capital.

The commenter did none of that on statistics. He simply said that the article was misleading and he asked for more time. He didn’t even bother to argue the statistic that I found shaky, which was to only survey the first week of the month. Apparently Air Force Guy thinks we need another four years, or indefinite occupation, something our president said he would not do when he was running for election in 2000.

Drummond and al Dulaimy also provide some caveats:

Overall civilian deaths dropped significantly in June, when a four-day curfew was in effect. … "When insurgents are captured or killed in one area, they will try to move their operations and activities to another just to show they are still in business by killing more innocent people, as you saw in," Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's foreign minister, said at a news conference Monday.

So, a question: Is it a win for the US/Iraq if insurgents still set off bombs, but just in a different location, such as Armili? I certainly don’t think so, and I pray that someone who calls themselves, “Air Force Guy,” would care a little more about the brave soldiers who are in the lines of fire, instead of trying to convince their selves to the idea that we’re succeeding without having any evidence to back it up. I care too much about our military personnel to allow their deaths and sacrifices in another country’s civil war to be tallied as some sort of success. You want more time, fine, then ask, but also realize that you’re asking for more deaths as well.

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

2007-07-22T21:29:00.000-04:00

Spoon’s 6^th LP, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, came out recently, and once again we have an album with and eclectic sound that Spoon has become known for.

For any music critic who tries to argue that they’re becoming stagnant, I think it’s time that we all realized Spoon’s albums have always been an eclectic sound. So, just because the band still tries to offer the same amount of differences, we shouldn’t overlook the differences. This, to me, is Spoon’s finest album.

My favorite track: Finer Feelings

Goodbye

2007-07-22T21:26:00.000-04:00

No, this isn’t my farewell to my very faithful friends who read this blog, but rather another music review; this time for Ulrich Schnauss’ latest album, Goodbye. Don’t look for any change in musical direction as opposed to Schnauss’ last two albums as he continues further on into the electronic genre of shoegaze and ambience.

While most people tend to completely disavow of the electronic genre as some mindless bit of formulaic noise, Schnauss has continuously been able to put together tracks and compositions that are both deep and emotionally moving. There is nothing baseless in this album, or any of those he did prior.

My favorite track: Stars

Cinco de Mowo

2007-07-22T21:24:00.000-04:00

Mocean Worker’s (a.k.a. Adam Dorn) fifth album sees a continuation of the jazz and big band breaks that were in Enter the Mowo, as well as the continuation of the Mowo moniker that Dorn has fallen in love with.

Just like his fourth album, there’s very few things to not like, so long as you have a taste for all things jazz and electronic music that in no way resembles anything close to the progressive house, or trance genres people associate with the umbrella genre. This is another one of those albums where I dare you to listen to it and not smile.

My favorite track: Olé Baby.

What Happiness Research Won't Do

2007-07-18T19:37:00.000-04:00

Robert Samuelson pegs happiness research’s pros and cons in his latest op-ed in the Washington Post.

The takeaway:

Still, even the 1990s economic boom didn't produce a happiness boom; the survey figures barely budged. Nor has the growing income inequality since the 1970s produced an unhappiness boom. Between the richest and poorest Americans, happiness gaps have always been large. But income differences in the middle class involve modest or nonexistent differences in happiness. The old adage is true: Money can't buy happiness.

We ultimately get satisfaction from our relations with family and friends, the love we give or receive, the meaning we find in work, service, religion or hobbies. The strongest survey finding is that married people are happier than singles, particularly widowers and divorcees, says Tom Smith of the National Opinion Research Center. An estimated 42.5 percent of married couples say they are "very happy," compared with 18 percent of the divorced.

Ultimately, happiness research won’t show us the best path to happiness, but at least it can show anyone who is willing to have an open mind about where we fool ourselves into thinking what certain things will make us happy.

On Happiness Research

2007-07-17T19:05:00.000-04:00

I was writing to a friend of mine and debating the relevancy about “happiness research.” Bryan Caplan has touched on happiness research many times (here, here, and here).

Caplan states:

Arnold could point out a lot of flaws in this literature, but F&L (Shane Frederick and George Loewenstein) have beaten him to the punch. They inventory a long list of inadequacies in existing research. But they diverge from Arnold in taking a constructive attitude toward happiness - separating the wheat from the chaff, noting areas with mixed results, and pointing out better approaches.

The bottom line is that I'm glad that smart, careful scholars like F&L are hard at work on this topic because I want the answers. Happiness is much too important to be left to the mush-heads in the New Age/Self-Help section.

And I think what really ends up happening when people want to dispute research that they simply don’t like or can’t agree with immediately off the hip is described well enough by Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post:

Much information is in some way incomplete or imperfect. The proper response to evidence that you dislike or dispute is to supplement or discredit it with better evidence. The wrong response is to suppress it. And yet, that's the agenda of these college presidents. By not cooperating with the U.S. News survey, they hope to sabotage the rankings. They say they'll provide superior information. But they want to control what parents and students see. This is soft censorship.

And to completely refute happiness research as my friend does is soft censorship as well. Papers published in scholarly journals refute misinformation well enough as opposed to unsupported frank disagreements.

Manufacturing Diversity

2007-07-16T22:50:00.000-04:00

George Will wrote in his column about the latest Supreme Court case regarding the decision to limit how race can be used to compose the student body. That is to say, the court is refusing to tell certain children to go to a certain school all in the name of “diversity.”

In making the point, Will hits on another issue that I had while I was a Resident Assistant in school. As he put it:

Breyer said that last week's decision abandons "the promise of Brown." Actually, that promise -- a colorblind society -- has been traduced by the "diversity" exception to the equal protection clause. That exception allows white majorities to feel noble while treating blacks and certain other minorities as seasoning -- a sort of human oregano -- to be sprinkled across a student body to make the majority's educational experience more flavorful.

…

The point for race-mongering diversity tinkerers is their professional and ideological stake in preventing America from achieving "a colorblind mentality."

I hate to break it to some of my former fellow co-workers, but I do not think we were helping the situation ourselves. And on that note, I wonder how many of those professional staffers and other resident assistants of Residence Life in my university and so many others actually read any newspaper? Were they always reading from a pre-selected script on what diversity means, and why they should support it? The beauty in manufacturing consent is that it makes you believe that you are thinking for yourself.

Wheelan on Voters

2007-07-11T18:02:00.000-04:00

Charles Wheelan echoes some of the same sentiments as Bryan Caplan.

The beauty of representative democracy is that our politicians give us what we want. Doesn't that make us the culpable party?

Anyone want to refute that? To imitate Stephen Colbert for a moment, if you do disagree with Wheelan’s inflection, you are essentially saying that our system is broken and that we may as well be living in a communist state, comrade.

Environmental Policy

2007-07-10T18:14:00.000-04:00

I was reading the Washington Post a few days ago, which has been running an exposé on Vice President Cheney since Sunday. In one day's feature, they explain his environmental stances.

The situation is thusly explained:

Robert F. Smith had grown desperate by the time he turned to the vice president for help.

The former Republican congressman from Oregon represented farmers in the Klamath basin who had relied on a government-operated complex of dams and canals built almost a century ago along the Oregon-California border to irrigate nearly a quarter-million acres of arid land.

In April 2001, with the region gripped by the worst drought in memory, the spigot was shut off.

Studies by the federal government's scientists concluded unequivocally that diverting water would harm two federally protected species of fish, violating the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The Bureau of Reclamation was forced to declare that farmers must go without in order to maintain higher water levels so that two types of suckerfish in Upper Klamath Lake and the coho salmon that spawn in the Klamath River could survive the dry spell.

…

Because of Cheney's intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

My stance was always that farm subsidies never help anyone out, except farmers because the subsidies keep food prices artificially high. Not only that, but for the government to help people out when their businesses don't do well completely does away with how the free market is supposed to work.

The obvious counter to that argument is that government intervention in terms of wildlife is just that, intervention. Technically speaking, that is not very free market, although the government does have control over wildlife to the extent that people continuously vote for protection of many endangered species, which is how certain agencies are then formed. That is to say, the public does care about the environment, or at least their local environment.

As an economist, I believe the items that need government support – or intervention if that's what you would prefer to call it – are items that would otherwise create an obvious market failure. A Market failure comes in two general varieties.

First, we can think of non-market institutions that better serve the public as opposed to if they were privately run. Firefighting and policing is a good example where the state usually provides very adequate services in that nature. The other type of market failure is when a market would not produce an outcome that is actually very good for the public in the long run. An example of this I believe is the Department of the Interior, which works with national parks and wildlife refuges. Whether you believe in the effectiveness is another matter as opposed to the fact that if this were not government run, we would see another market failure.

Let's look at part of a response from a friend of mine who works in Entomology and Wildlife Ecology:

From an anthropological standpoint, diversity provides a greater number of ecosystem services to draw upon and depend on, such a medicinal plants and fertile soils. So what if a fish goes extinct, we've got so many others? The problem is, we don't know…we are still learning the relationships different species play in an ecosystem.

It would be difficult to surmise that the free market would show the environment any non-profit courtesy; however government institutions are supposed to be run in the public interest, and in light of the imposing market failure, the department of interior is necessary in my opinion.

Here is however the problem with the two departments in question relating to what we wrote about yesterday. Firstly, the Department of Agriculture, which needless to say I am not a fan of, and the Department of Interior had to each make payments from the decision that Vice President Cheney made.

Last summer, the federal government declared a "commercial fishery failure" on the West Coast after several years of poor chinook returns virtually shut down the industry, opening the way for Congress to approve more than $60 million [MK: that's coming from the department of interior] in disaster aid to help fishermen recover their losses. That came on top of the $15 million [MK: that's coming from the department of agriculture] that the government has paid Klamath farmers since 2002 not to farm, in order to reduce demand.

To put it simply, what came out of this was waste, proving that you really can't have it both ways, and that, proving John Stossel right, the taxpayers end up having to pay for it.

I have a friend whose family lives off of farming, yet I still can't reconcile how farming is sustainable by asking tax payers to artificially support it.

I certainly do not agree with what happened in Oregon, but if the same situation was happening to my friend’s dad how would I feel? I'm not sure if I could tell him, "Well, that's the risk of farming," without fear of getting punched in the face. This is probably why it's easier to be an economist than it is to be a politician.

Preconceived Notions

2007-07-09T18:21:00.000-04:00

I’m back from a break in writing, although I still need to take a real life vacation from my day job. Moving on to today’s topic.

I realized that unless people stop vehemently stating “I don’t care what science/statistics say,” or our elected governments stop continuously building up their nanny stature, we’re going to get papers like this from Michael Baker and Kevin Milligan; papers that continuously seek looking at the efficiency of the government’s assistant programs. Milligan and Baker’s paper is entitled “Maternal employment, breastfeeding, and health: Evidence from maternity leave mandates.”

The takeaway:

We uncover several interesting and relevant findings. First, there was a substantial increase in the number of months mothers were away from work post-birth; more than three months for those eligible for leave. Second, breastfeeding duration increased sharply, with significant increases in the proportion of mothers attaining public health breastfeeding benchmarks including six months exclusive breastfeeding. Finally, we find little effect of the increase in breastfeeding (and parental care) on self-reported indicators of the mother and child (in the first 24 months) health captured in the NLSCY.

My point is that when you hear someone express that “This preschool is the best,” or that breastfeeding is so important, remember that it’s okay to ask, “Says who?”

US Grand Prix

2007-06-19T18:34:00.000-04:00

The North American part of the 2007 Formula 1 season has ended with Lewis Hamilton winning the US Grand Prix.

I’d love to comment further, but there’s not too much to add that hasn’t already been written. Check out grandprix.com for the report and other news.

Also, my main reason for not commenting is that I’ll be taking a slight break from blogging for a few weeks, maybe a month. Hopefully I can give myself a vacation since I haven’t taken one in more than a year.

Thanks for checking in with me, and I look forward to returning to writing in a few weeks.

Buyouts and Mergers

2007-06-17T15:39:00.000-04:00

There was one rather tidy rumor that came out of Steve Matchett’s (F1 commentator for Speed TV) mouth during practice for the Canadian Grand Prix. Apparently, Matchett tells us that if Toyota doesn’t see a change in its results within most probably the next two years, it will buy out the Williams operation and work from England, where most F1 engineers choose to reside.

All this would fit into Toyota F1’s business plan considering that the manufacturer has never had a problem before in making the right decisions towards efficiency and productivity. That is to say, they have run the Formula 1 operation on their own, and have now possibly seen that changes
need to be made as to how they run their F1 operation.

Economically speaking, I see this all the time with mergers, buy outs, and acquisitions occurring quite often. For a modern firm to see in its analysis that it can run, or be run, more efficiently in another manner is nothing new. All they need to find is a willing partner that can provide the synergies necessary to make a successful operation.

Toyota now already uses a gearbox from the Williams F1 team. I await the suggestions of other possible synergies and cost saving measures.

Canadian Grand Prix

2007-06-14T18:22:00.000-04:00

If you saw last weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix, then let me congratulate you on not having your head explode on what has to be the most eventful – not momentous or epoch, just eventful – Grand Prix I have seen in my lifetime.

The only item in that race that made sense to me was watching Lewis Hamilton win his first Grand Prix. It was a tremendous performance to see a driver who is in the lead for his first Formula 1 victory, actually pull through and make it happen considering that the entire field around him seemed to be about as organized as a bee hive being sprayed with RAID.

Jarno Trulli said that he came out of the weekend feeling only relief that the altercation involving the horrific accident of BMWs Robert Kubica after he had gotten into the rear of Jarno Trulli. Trulli said:

…the over-riding feeling from the weekend is not about light-hearted matters, it is one of relief.

Changing over to the good news category was Nick Heidfeld’s second place finish, Alex Wurz’s third place for Williams-Toyota, and Heiki Kovalainen’s fourth for Renault.

I think Grand Prix.com summed up the race weekend well enough when they wrote, “When Sato overtook Alonso on the main straight we concluded that we had finally seen it all.”

For Toyota there’s a change now up top as Tsutomu Tomita is retiring from his post as team principal. Tomita is 63, and normally around 65, and as far as I understand, it becomes Japanese custom to retire or begin a calmer chapter in life. Tomita will become the new man behind the Fuji Speedway, which will see its return of F1, September 30.

(picture taken from Toyota F1)

Will Zeallor Explains Paris Hilton

2007-06-13T22:08:00.000-04:00

My friend and former peer, Will, with the most thorough and educated review of Paris Hilton.

The takeaway:

Above all else, Paris is the perfect narcissist. Current psychology holds that a narcissist is like a balloon: shiny, colorful, ever-expanding, and completely hollow on the inside.

Rally Acropolis

2007-06-12T18:55:00.000-04:00

The Rally Acropolis two weeks ago saw Marcus Grönholm extend his lead in the World Rally Championship a few more points over Sebastien Loeb.

Subaru’s Petter Solberg finished third, and Chris Atkinson 6^th. I had previously written that the rest of the season would turn into a long test for the team. But with reports that Xavier Pons will start driving a third car for the team, it seems that team might be thinking the Pons will be driving to gather more data for the team, while hopefully the other two drivers continue to improve.

Greece is a historically car-damaging rally, and this event was not much different. Chris Atkinson actually led the rally during the first day, until he hit a rock in the morning of the second day. Petter Solberg also was in second, until he suffered from a broken damper that brought him down the leader board. By the third day, both Subaru drivers were merely looking to consolidate their positions.

Going into the long summer break that is a defining characteristic of the WRC, the season leader boards look as follows with Ford continuing to run away with the constructor’s championship. In the driver’s standings, Grönholm also edged a little further away in the points over Loeb, while Miko Hirvonen still has a strong hold on third. If Subaru continues to improve its perform as it did in Greece, there is a slight possibility that Solberg might end up fighting for third with Hirvonen instead of battling with his brother, Henning, and Dani Sordo for fourth.

Position.	Constructor	Points
1	FORD	114
2	CITROEN	86
3	SUBARU	43
4	STOBART	41
5	OMV KRONOS	27
6	MUNCHI S	1

Position.	Pilote	Points
1	M. Gronholm (FIN)	65
2	S. Loeb (F)	56
3	M. Hirvonen (FIN)	49
4	D. Sordo (SP)	28
5	P. Solberg (N)	26
6	H. Solberg (N)	24
7	C. Atkinson (AUS)	15
8	J. Latvala (FIN)	12

Public v. Private Academia

2007-06-11T23:35:00.000-04:00

Academia can be very exciting, even when we are only talking about employing teachers. Even though I know the average student and/or person doesn’t think about it, there’s a bidding war out there for best and brightest…economics professor.

As David Warsh explained last week:

Some of the problem must have to do with the university's administration -- but not all. "Because of the way private university endowments are managed, they have grown substantially," says Gary Hansen, the current chairman. State budget appropriations haven't kept pace.

Here’s hoping the alumni donation check to the University of Delaware does something meaningful for the economics department. Luckily, many schools have significant individual donors, which is why the UD’s business college is named the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics.

Adding Value with Dissidence

2007-06-07T19:48:00.000-04:00

Last week, I saw a few interesting posts that caught my attention. It all started with David Warsh and his discussion of heterodox economics. Later on in the week, Arnold Kling argued on being too confident about your own intelligence while mentioning that he thinks most dissident views are wrong.

While I’m not sure if David Warsh thinks that most views in heterodoxy are wrong, he and Kling do agree on one thing for sure. Discourse can be strengthened when more ideas are brought, even if those views and ideas are of a minority and could end up being proven wrong.

It’s that kind of melting pot of ideas and possibilities that still makes academia so exciting to me.

An Economists Night Out

2007-06-06T18:24:00.000-04:00

A very good friend of mine is getting married in July, and many of his friends (including me) got together to go out in celebration. However, this was not planned to be the proverbial bachelor party. That is to say that there would not be a stripper. To put it simply, it would be a night out with friends.

Throughout the night everyone (not me personally, everyone else) made our good friend wear a shirt denoting him to be “THE BACHeLOR.” (Sic) On the back of said shirt was a “Grope-Me-Ometer” (sic) so that anyone who groped him would be able to sign their name on the back of the shirt.

So, there’s your setup. While I would never do this to my friend, or anyone else for that matter, I decided that in order to spend time with my friend, a tradeoff of my friend embarrassing himself was allowable.

While we made a first stop at a bar that was not too busy, the group thought it better to move to another establishment. Better yet, a bar knowingly to everyone as having only homosexual patronage.

Unfortunately, they failed to realize that their plan didn't have a "let's allow Mike K to wait somewhere else while this goes on" contingency. Now you may say, gee Mike, "why so scared of being in a gay bar?" Well, I'll tell you why...

This blog post from Emil Steiner, which I read just two days prior to our adventure, gets to the heart of the matter.

From Steiner’s post:

In her opinion, deputy tribunal president Cate McKenzie found that "allow[ing] large numbers of straight men and women and lesbians into the bar could 'undermine or destroy' the convivial atmosphere that the Peel Hotel sought to create for gay men."

Now, I agree with what Steiner writes on later in his post, in that the ruling might be interpreted as saying that different lifestyles can’t co-exist with each other, and that is a bad message. But back to my point…

What the article told me was that our group’s presence at this bar might not exactly be appreciated. Soon after our arrival, irony decided to show its way through the door with a bachelorette party, and as serendipity would have it, they were our age. (If you read the post from Steiner, you’ll see that in theory the bachelorette party might not help our situation). But, you might still be thinking to yourself though that I’m just making this problem up. Well, let me try to refute that very reasonable argument.

I can’t tell you how many times we were suggested that another bar was a much more happening scene that particular night. But being that I don’t drink alcohol, I was able to see under the “signaling” that the bar patrons were trying to coax us out of their establishment and get out of their hair.

I guess I can now say that I have, in fact, lived out one of the story lines to an Electric Six song.

We soon left for another bar. As luck would have it the bachelorette party arrived there as well only minutes after. Having another group of ladies there that our group had befriended is vital to the real economics for the night.

Sitting next to my friend, let’s call him George; he had started conversing with one of the members of the bachelorette party; the sister of the bride / maid of honor to be exact, and a very pretty lady if I do say so myself. Another one of our friends lets call him Richard, showed up, and the conversation immediately had gone over from George to Richard. I was pretty amazed at how quickly this was done, but it wasn’t new to me. I had known Richard actually from a few years ago when I was in college, and I had observed his personality and charisma first hand. Richard has always been a magnet for women since I’ve known him. What surprised me was that he was able to take the conversation away from George, whom I think is a stand up guy, so quickly.

Well, needless to say George was surprised…to say the least of his reactions. What was the crux of the economic issue though? Well, first in terms of an overall market perspective, Richard operates like a monopoly. Actually, that may be too much of a stretch. Let’s say that Richard operates more like Microsoft, and someone like George is like Apple/Linux. That is to say, Richard already has a girlfriend, and yet he can still attract more clients / women. Why? Well, we can deal with that in another post.

Backing off from the market perspective, how was I able to have such a different reaction then George? The answer comes to us from looking at things as an economist again. Now, a communications major might say, “George felt that he had lost face.” As an economist, I won’t disagree with that, but I’ve been able to cope with Richard and the reaction that women have to Richard by simply realizing that this is the market operating.

If a woman were to be talking to me, and then start talking to Richard after only ten seconds of his arrival, I could get mad as I used to when I was a naïve freshman in college. However, what I’ve found out is that Richard has most likely one of two things: a great personality like mine, or an even better one. That is to say, Richard produces either as good a product that I produce, or better. It is, in fact, that simple. Now, when I say “better,” I mean “better for girl x.” It’s really just a better product for her, so she’s making that choice as a consumer.

There’s another way to look at this as well. Essentially, if and when you’re talking to someone whom you’d like to “court” (I have no other way of nicely saying, “Someone you have the jones’ for”) you’re starting the beginning of contract negotiations and looking for signals. Now, at what point in the relationship someone says “Let’s not entertain anymore contracts” (i.e. let’s be exclusive to each other) is up to the couple. So, technically, if Richard’s lady friend (remember I said he was seeing someone) sees his actions as a breach of contract, then maybe they’ll have to restart negotiations.

Tim Harford did a great job explaining this:

In 1920s America, courts would enforce ”breach of promise” suits for ladies who had been promised marriage, slept with the cad and then been dumped... Courts no longer do this, which is why it became traditional to supplement such proposals with non-refundable deposits, to be worn on the ring finger.

So, while George can be mad that Richard stole the conversation of our new lady friend, I had to marvel and take comfort in how the market works. The lesson is, in the beginning of contract negotiations we can’t help if the other party entertains other offers, or ends up taking them. And with Richard in particular, while he may have a relationship of his own, he hasn’t given his lady a “non-refundable deposit to be worn on the ring finger,” as Tim Harford put it, and technically he might be allowed to entertain other offers if his current contract allows him to (i.e. his girlfriend says it’s okay to talk to other women in bars).

Also, maybe for another blog post, we can talk about the different interpretations and possibilities of what “entertaining other offers,” means. Also, we might be able to discuss at what part of the contract “due diligence” is required and completed. There’s a lot of grey area in there, and in the end, the two contracted parties involved in a relationship are the ones who set and enforce the rules for each other.

I should start bringing textbooks to bachelor parties.

Controlling the Narrative

2007-06-04T19:41:00.000-04:00

E.J. Dionne had an op-ed recently in the Washington Post about the messages of each party’s main candidates, and what the voters in their parties respond to and care about.

The takeaway:

Consolidating these results dramatizes how different Democraticland is from Republicanland: 42 percent of Democrats listed one of three big domestic issues (the economy, health care and education) compared with only 20 percent of Republicans. The hot-button issues of immigration and abortion were overwhelmingly Republican concerns (20 percent to 2 percent).

And so the Democrats who debate on Sunday and the Republicans who debate on Tuesday will offer a portrait of an election in which our parties are speaking different languages to two very different Americas. This can't be good for us, and it surely won't help whoever is lucky or unlucky enough to be our next president.

The constituents and the candidates seem to set their priorities differently and the problem is that there is yet to be a candidate that is honest and sincere about all the issues. Each candidate seems to be content to cater to the narrative of their party, and not speak . I at least hope this will change after the primaries.

I believe this is partly as to what leads to the myth of the rational voter.

Monaco Grand Prix

2007-06-03T16:53:00.000-04:00

In the last Grand Prix at Monaco (or Monte Carlo if you so prefer) we saw Toyota yet again flounder around in the back of the pack. I’ll be honest in that I never expect good things from Toyota at Monaco. Apart from last year’s close-call podium finish for Jarno Trulli (he retired with a mechanical failure), Toyota rarely shows well on that street circuit.

Trulli and Ralf Schumacher finished 14 and 15^th respectively, two laps down.

The FIA was investigating McLaren for violation of the sporting code. That is to say, they wondered if they purposefully held back Lewis Hamilton to let Fernando Alonso win. A few days later though, McLaren was cleared when they reviewed the radio transmissions and saw that the team was running a strategy that would ensure they would finish with the maximum points possible for the team.

Even my friend, Dave, got caught up in the McLaren hysteria here and here. In my opinion, the rule itself is such a tough call in terms of how we define what “team orders” are, and how they should affect the race. Not only that, but as an economist, I have to admit that the penalties are quite draconian in that I never have any idea how severe the penalties are for certain infractions.

With that said though, McLaren Mercedes has been the best team by far this season. Ferrari, while having a strong car, and many thought the best car, has struggled relative to their expectations. BMW is also the surprise team of the year being that they are the third best.

While everyone is surprised at the drivers’ standings, I am not. Alonso is the reigning champion, and Lewis Hamilton is obviously a talented driver on a talented team. For people with utter amazement at Hamilton, let me just tell them to calm down. As it turns out, fantastic drivers on fantastic teams usually end up doing well.

POS DRIVER NATIONALITY ENTRANT POINTS

1. FERNANDO ALONSO Spain McLaren-Mercedes 38

LEWIS HAMILTON Britain McLaren-Mercedes 38

3. FELIPE MASSA Brazil Ferrari 33

4. KIMI RAIKKONEN Finland Ferrari 23

5. NICK HEIDFELD Germany BMW 18

6. GIANCARLO FISICHELLA Italy Renault 13

7. ROBERT KUBICA Poland BMW 12

8. NICO ROSBERG Germany Williams-Toyota 5

9. JARNO TRULLI Italy Toyota 4

DAVID COULTHARD Britain Red Bull-Renault 4

11. HEIKKI KOVALAINEN Finland Renault 3

12. ALEXANDER WURZ Austria Williams-Toyota 2

13. RALF SCHUMACHER Germany Toyota 1

TAKUMA SATO Japan Super Aguri-Honda 1

POS CONSTRUCTOR POINTS

1. MCLAREN-MERCEDES 76

2. FERRARI 56

3. BMW 30

4. RENAULT 16

5. WILLIAMS-TOYOTA 7

6. TOYOTA 5

7. RED BULL-RENAULT 4

8. SUPER AGURI-HONDA 1

My Political Compass

2007-06-03T13:26:00.000-04:00

Here is my Political Compass. Why show this? Well, because Greg Mankiw did one, and Dani Rodrik told me to.

Not Getting the Signal

2007-05-25T17:35:00.000-04:00

In terms of relationships, when we start out we usually deal with asymmetric information. That is to say, I truly don’t know what the other person is thinking. It’s kind of like contract negotiations.

So, the best anyone can do is to look at the signaling to try and receive the best information. So, as far as I understand it from my economics classes in college, I have to ask:

How much effort (or cost) did it take for me to receive this signal?
What would make this signal not important? That is to say, at what point do I or the other person each get a better offer that we would then take?
Do I trust this signal?

I believe those are the questions for signaling.

So, when a friend of mine tried to tell me that one of his wife’s friends was someone whom I should go out with, I had to think about this like an economist.

What were the signals? Well, none. All of those questions above revolve around some kind of intent. Simply put: I’m signaling _______ because _______ is what I want. I had met her a few times before in a friendly setting, and from all the signals I was seeing, I had nothing that this girl wants.

Not only that, but we need to remember that actions speak louder than words. Just like how an economist would say, “They voted with their pocketbooks.” The market will tell you what people want. And from my friend’s short telling of this young lady’s history, I could tell I was not the catch she envisioned. It happens; people want different things.

Even my good friend Will - well versed now in psychology - told me:

It all comes down to what one finds attractive. If, in this point in her life, she finds someone attractive that you’re not or don’t plan to be it’s not going to work out.

It seems as though my friend has a different idea of what his wife’s friend needs despite from what she wants. It doesn’t take a graduate degree in psychology or economics to figure out I is not the product she’s in the market for. But it’s important that we give these small economics lessons to ourselves and our friends.

Rally Italia

2007-05-24T22:10:00.000-04:00

The WRC finished its 7^th round in Italy on the island of Sardinia this past weekend, where we saw Sebastien Loeb have a slight off that damaged his suspension where he would later retire on the stage. Marcus Grönholm picked up the lead from there and held on to win.

Elsewhere in the field, Chris Atkinson was running in the top eight until he hit a rock and had to retire his Subaru Impreza. And while mentioning Atkinson’s run in with a rock, another rock in the road took out the feel good story of the year, Jari Mati Latvala.

Petter Solberg finished fifth deciding to consolidate his position on the final day in his Subaru rather than push harder to try and overtake his brother, Henning, ahead of him.

The drivers standings thus far:
1. M. GRÖNHOLM (FIN) 55 Pts
2. S. LOEB (F) 48 Pts

3. M. HIRVONEN (FIN) 44 Pts
4. D. SORDO (E) 28 Pts
5. H. SOLBERG (N) 20 Pts
6. P. SOLBERG (N) 20 Pts
7. J. LATVALA (FIN) 12 Pts
8. C. ATKINSON (AUS) 12 Pts

The constructor’s championship thus far:

1 BP-Ford World Rally Team 99
2 Citroën Total World Rally Team 78
3 Stobart VK M-Sport Ford Rally Team 37
4 Subaru World Rally Team 34
5 OMV Kronos Citroën World Rally Team 25

It is beyond close up top for the drivers, even Miko Hirvonen is in the thick of the battle for the driver’s championship. He can thank his unlikely win in Norway, and his podium finishes in all rallies this year to his good standing. Grönholm and Loeb continue to fight it out, and I think that battle will continue for the rest of the season. Sordo has also done an decent enough job backing up Loeb as a team mate. We need to remember that he had started out as a tarmac expert, and his performance this past weekend in Italy show that he’s matured.

Petter Solberg and Chris Atkinson have turned their season into a long test to finish testing the car, taking notes to apply for the next model year’s Impreza.

The constructor’s championship shows the same story as the driver’s. Hirvonen’s better teammate performance (as opposed to Dani Sordo’s) is what has allowed the Ford Rally Team to stay ahead of Citroën. Unless Sordo picks it up, Ford will retain the constructor’s championship that it won last season.

Females Sharks Don't Need Males

2007-05-24T19:58:00.000-04:00

Well, for those that scoff at my fear of never finding a wife as irrational…they are probably right. But it still doesn’t take anything away from this piece of science news.

The takeaway:

Research on the perished pup found that it had no paternal DNA. Additionally, it possessed half of its mother’s genetic diversity. Combined, the data indicates the mother gave birth through a non-sexual mode of reproduction known as automatic parthenogenesis.

It may be, in fact, only a matter of time before I become outdated. Thanks for nothing, Darwin.

Working Wives Enjoy Lasting Marriages

2007-05-24T19:10:00.000-04:00

Working wives enjoy lasting marriages. Well, at least it’s correlated for sure. Whether they are happier or not is a different story all together.

The takeaway:

The main shift was away from breadwinner-homemaker marriages to what the authors call "egalitarian marriages." In them, husbands and wives share decision-making power more equally and housekeeping and child-care duties more equitably.

…

Indeed, some studies have found that marriages in which the wives work aren't necessarily happier even if they are more stable.

That last part I made sure to include because there is also some research out there that shows while families are happy that they may have a child, the next child they have doesn’t necessarily make them happier.

More on Fundamentalism

2007-05-22T19:57:00.000-04:00

Mikey K:

Greetings treasured friend of the east coast.

I just finished watching a documentary and I was wondering if it was one you had seen - "Jesus Camp." It's about Evangelicals/Christian Fundamentalists and how they're raising an "army" of Christian youth. Being that you're one of the most intelligent friends I have, and certainly one of the most religious, I was intrigued to hear your thoughts. If you've not seen it, I highly recommend it. Let me know.

KT

Hi Kevin,

I have not seen Jesus Camp, however I had been fully aware of it since it’s release quite some time ago. I was always a fervent supporter to anything that brought attention to the fundamentalist psyche that has so tainted our country. Don’t believe me? Ask Andrew Sullivan, or read his book.

I have blogged before about fundamentalism. Once again, what I have seen personally and what I understand Jesus Camp has shown to others is that fundamentalism is pervasive, and found in places that seem, and probably are harmless. But, how harmless can a thought be? Or an ideology?

I grew up thinking Catholicism was some great evil that was so restrictive and ideological on its own. Boy was I wrong, because in certain respects I believe The Vatican to be much more open-minded. For example, Pope John Paul II said that the Catholic Church was open to the theory of evolution. However, the hierarchy of the church can be intolerant in other places. But what I have seen from fundamentalism is a hi-jacking of what it means to be a Christian.

Let us just take a look at tolerance. I see none of it from fundamentalists. Fundamentalism is about crusading, and as Sullivan wrote in his book, crusades are not about persuasion, but about coercion. Sullivan also wrote about what it would be like for non-Christians in a “divinely sanctioned order” (that is to say, if Rick Santorum had the government he hopes for):

The guarantee of minority religious freedom, in other words, would no longer be constitutional protection, but majority benevolence.

That is not the country I thought my parents immigrated to.

Kevin, I will leave you with a short story, something that I witnessed not but a few days ago. In my Bible study, I was listening to my friends describe their church service and they told me that they were encouraged to speak in tongues.

Now, do me a favor, and actually come with me to wikipedia to examine what’s going on here. And this is the problem of fundamentalism. First, there is a literal interpretation, and as even wikipedia informs us, in translation from Greek, Paul did not write the word “unknown” in front of the word “tongues.” But it can be argued, and probably will by fundamentalists, that it’s just semantics. In any case, there are a few things to consider when Paul wrote speaking in tongues.

First, while Paul encouraged people to speak “in tongues,” he meant for people to do so as to speak to God. It is meant for NO ONE ELSE. This proves to me what I had always thought about fundamentalism, which is that it’s more for themselves than others. When you see this, it is merely for their image. So as to say, “I am a better Christian than you; I speak in tongues.”

Second, Paul also indicates that not all Christians do, or are to, speak in tongues. Yet, here I am, hearing this story from my friends that they are so encouraged to speak in tongues. Why? What’s the motivation? How does speaking in tongues lead people to God? How does this help anyone in anyway?

As a Christian myself, I will not discourage the practice, per se, but I will say this: We have come as a society, a civilization, to the point of such clear ability to say how we feel in an articulate manner, even about topics such as God and religion. I see that the only reason for anyone to speak in tongue and to do so publicly is solely for the purpose of publicity, not God.

And I think that in the end that will be fundamentalisms downfall. Their actions and beliefs are about themselves, their fears, and their un-Jesus-like intolerance of others, not God. Don’t believe me again? Read up on the debate for the bill on immigration.

Your friend,
Mike K.

Another View on F1 Teams

2007-05-22T18:09:00.000-04:00

In relation to my previous post on what a team needs in order to win in Formula 1, Grand Prix.com has a perspective on what kind of team can win a championship.

The takeaway:

The crux of the matter is how the team is run and whether it is run directly from Japan or whether the European end of the operation is left to manage its own affairs and reporting back to Japan on a regular basis. Traditionally in F1, teams which are run direct by car manufacturers tend not to work very well as the attitudes needed to be successful in F1 are very different to those needed to run a car company.

Another View on College

2007-05-21T22:00:00.000-04:00

Here is another view on college from the New Yorker via Ben Casnocha.

As I have written about college before (just do a search for “college” on my blog), I still cannot get over the fact that parents pay for their children’s college “education.” Don’t believe me?

Listen to Bryan Caplan on the subject:

Most people who criticize our education system complain that we aren't spending our money in the right way, or that ideologues-in-teachers'-clothes are leading our nation's children down a dark path. While I mildly sympathize with some of these complaints, they often contradict what I see as the real problem with our educational system: There's simply far too much education going on. The typical student burns up thousands of hours of his time learning about things that neither raise his productivity nor enrich his life. And of course, a student can't waste thousands of hours of his time without real estate to do it in, or experts to show him how.

Rally Argentina

2007-05-20T20:48:00.000-04:00

In case anyone thought I forgot about the Rally Argentina a few weeks ago, I didn’t. It merely took me forever to find the time to watch the coverage.

The rally followed the gist of the season for the most part. Sebastien Loeb in his Citroen C4 finished first, Marcus Grönholm’s Ford second, and Miko Hirvonen third in his Ford as well. Petter Solberg ran well but was forced to retire with a mechanical failure.

Solberg’s Subaru teammate, Chris Atkinson, finished 7th after a tumultuous rally where an inspiring drive on one part of the day was be followed by a bad car setup. While I can’t be sure of what he said, I’m pretty sure Chris Atkinson commented at the end of one stage, “We’re just wasting our time if it’s going to be like this.”

The rest of the leader board had the usual smattering of Ford drivers such as Henning Solberg and Jari Matti-Latvala.

The Rally Sardigna just happened over this weekend, and I’ll try to report on that by Thursday night. In that post I’ll also try to give everyone a recap as to where we stand in terms of the drivers and constructor’s championships.

Spanish Grand Prix

2007-05-17T21:05:00.000-04:00

While Kimi Raikonnen retired his Ferrari, the Spanish Grand Prix this past weekend was quite normal up front.

My favorite team, Toyota, saw both of its cars retire. Trulli had what he referred to as a “stupid” fuel pump problem that stalled him at the beginning of the race, forcing the field to scrap a lap of the race. Trulli started from the pit lane, but did eventually retire. Ralf Schumacher retired after some 40-odd laps due from body damage to his Toyota, which left him relatively uncompetitive.

Another disappointment was for American Scott Speed in his Scuderia Toro Rosso Ferrari, who did tremendously well in terms of pace all weekend long, including qualifying. Unfortunately, a tire blow-out left him to retire during Sunday’s race.

However, I must admit that there were two tremendously bright spots in the weekend. Super Aguri Honda got their first championship point with Takuma Sato’s 8th place finish. And the brightest note of all to me was Red Bull Renault’s David Coulthard finishing in a strong 5th place.

The economist has gotten the better of me. I had to sit myself down on Sunday night and realize that the comments from many internet forums may be right. The question is regarding how a team designs a car. For example, it has become popular opinion that Toyota and Honda subscribe to their own corporate ideology as to design a car using a group of engineers as a team. Now, other teams don’t disagree with this, but using Red Bull as an example, you can see that they also believe in having one person become an integral character in their car. That person for Red Bull Racing this year is Adrian Newey.

Toyota had tried a big superstar engineer two seasons ago with Mike Gascoyne. And in my opinion, it worked, but Gascoyne left at the beginning of the season last year. Why? Well, a lot of people said it was because Toyota could not keep going along with that genius-engineer-guy mentality. And if I understand the Japanese work paradigm properly, it makes sense for there to be a clash. Heck, a part of me wants to ask Ben Casnocha (whom I believe knows business methods about as well as anyone) if it is part of the Japanese work ethos to revolve around working only as a team.

In any case, does it mean that in Formula 1, to be a successful team you must subscribe to not having a good team of engineers, but rather, a superstar engineer or aerodynamicist? It seems as though the case for superstars is a hard one to compete against. Therefore, being in Formula 1, it would make sense that just being a good team and having a lot of funding would in the end not be good enough.

(picture of David Coulthard thanks to Grand Prix.com and The Cahier Archive)

More on Climate Models

2007-05-16T20:08:00.000-04:00

Arnold Kling has many times written on his doubts of climate models, but this article from Discovery News is what keeps everyone else (including me) on the fence and erring on the side of caution.

The takeaway from the Discovery article:

Many politicians and climate skeptics have criticized computer models as erring on the side of predicting temperatures that are too hot and outcomes that are too apocalyptic with global warming. But Druyan said the problem is most computer models, especially when compared to their predictions of past observations, underestimate how bad global warming is. That's because they see too many rainy days, which tends to cool temperatures off, he said.

Let me remind the three people that read my blog though, that Arnold Kling doesn’t say climate science is false, but that it is inconclusive. Kling knows that there are some very adverse effects from CO2 levels and the like, but he is merely skeptical as to the rate of environmental degradation, as well as how much of that degradation is man made or cyclical. While I know so many people would disagree with Kling (and at times I do too), I welcome any attitude that says, “Please, let me see more evidence.”

Honey Production

2007-05-09T21:21:00.000-04:00

A reader points to this article and asks for my comment. Apparently the price of honey has increased because honey bees have been mysteriously dying.

Takeaway:

Beekeepers throughout the United States have been losing between 50 and 90 percent of their honeybees over the past six months, perplexing scientists, driving honey prices higher and threatening fruit and vegetable production.

So, what comes to my mind first is to wonder if this is an externality from an act of ours, such as commerce and/or farming. Caird E. Rexroad said the bees are facing stresses such as “migratory stresses, mites, pathogens and pesticides.”

Naturally, from the article, it’s difficult to simply point the finger at any one area and say therein lies the problem of honeybees. Not even the experts have a good idea for the next step.

So, let me ask that we all not to rush to judgment. If we were to heed Rexroad’s advice right now to its fullest, I would have to ask what other externalities would develop from trying to control our pathogens and pesticides.

However we can go through at least one economic thought experiment. We use pesticides in order to plant our own food in the US. But here’s a caveat, I’ve already stated in the past that I (and other well-respected economists) dislike agriculture subsidies. Also, I’m assuming here that bee/honey farmers don’t get those subsidies. So, what if the US were to stop subsidizing as much to farmers, and therefore the US farmed less and used pesticides less? Then, if pesticides are the stress that they are on bees, that act alone would start to help our honey bee production. But as I said, that assumes bees see a lot of pesticides and that the bee/honey farmers don’t get subsidies.

Externalities, one of the reasons why economists exist, and one of the things economists hate having to deal with.

Matt on Oil

2007-05-08T20:16:00.000-04:00

Here’s my good friend, Matt, on the feeble idea of a one day boycott on gasoline for May 15th that he knows about.

The take away:

Even still, this thinking has its own flaws. As soon as demand returns to what it was prior to the protest, the point of equilibrium between supply and demand will rise once more, in turn causing the price of gas to rise to what it was before the protest took place.

I appreciate the intentions of the protest. Unfortunately it will serve no purpose in the end other than to inconvenience you as a driver and a consumer.

And yes, I agree.

To add my own bit of commentary, it’s important to remember that while the price oil is changed by our demand, OPEC operates as a cartel and strives to affect the world price of oil. That is to say, OPEC has the ability to tighten its production and increase price. I believe that's what happens when the demand for a good is inelastic.

Competition and Monopoly

2007-05-07T21:09:00.000-04:00

Charles Wheelan discusses the postal service here. John Stossel discusses school choice here.

Sometimes I still get floored when I see and read the comments and/or hate mail that some writers receive. For example, if you read some of the comments left from Wheelan’s article, the consensus from all the people who didn’t rate it well was: “Why write about this? There are so many other bigger problems.”

Apparently not even the people who left the comments realize that Wheelan is a writer that has to deal with competition. Why write about something that everyone else is already writing about? Not only that, but why don’t the readers read another article. They complain as if Wheelan somehow wasted their time, and forced them to read his article. But I have absolutely no idea how he may have wasted readers time when he blatantly said in the title that he would write about the United States Postal Service. They knew what he was going to write about, so why didn’t they read something else?

It is the people who leave those kinds of comments that make books like this possible.

Night of the Furies

2007-05-02T20:32:00.000-04:00

I have to say that I dig the latest album by The Rosebuds, Night of the Furies. Like the duos two prior albums, Night of the Furies varies in tempo, but it also has a unifying theme around relationships.

Ivan actually blogged at one point that:

Some real drums sound like machines (!!!) and some machines sound like machines.

So, needless to say, there is more of a “synth feel” to this album than prior, but when you listen to their albums in succession, you can feel the progression. My favorite tracks just to name two are: Cemetery Lawns and Get Up Get Out.