Shocker
It turns out that a dish of three scoops of ice cream covered with whipped cream, hot fudge topping, nuts, sprinkles, and a cherry actually has lots of calories and fat in it. I'm glad they did a scientific study to figure that one out for us.
Read Jacob Sullum's excellent article on the highly annoying Center for Science in the Public Interest. I remember the days when CSPI was actually doing something useful, like telling us that Chinese food might not be as healthy as you thought, despite all those veggies. But I stopped listening about the time they helpfully informed us that Mexican food is not so healthy, either. As one columnist (can't remember who -- Tony Kornheiser maybe) put it, "If something fried is bad for you, how can something refried be good for you?"
Friday, July 25, 2003
Brights Out
Despite my sympathy with Daniel Dennett’s desire to raise the profile of atheists and agnostics in this country, I have to agree with Julian (read the comments box), and some other commentators, that Dennett’s choice of labels – “brights” – is pretentious and silly. (Not to mention that it opens the door to calling agnostics “Light Brights.”) But what other term would be appropriate?
I was pondering that question last night, when I caught my first episode of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” (which has many of the same annoying qualities as TLC’s “What Not To Wear” – maybe more on that later). And then it hit me: why not follow the strategy of homosexuals and other marginalized groups who have taken derogatory names for themselves and co-opted them as signs of pride?
Thus my proposal: atheists and agnostics should henceforth be known as “heretics.”
Thursday, July 24, 2003
Politics as Spectator Sport
Once you realize that the typical person has pretty much zero marginal impact on politics, and once you admit to yourself that you are in fact a typical person, it becomes a lot easier to view politics as essentially a form of entertainment. And California is a state known for its fabulously successful entertainment industry. Think of the Davis recall as the latest in reality television.
During the whole Lewinsky drama, many people criticized Kenneth Starr for spending $40 million (or whatever it was) to carry out a vendetta against the president. Put that way, it does sound pretty bad. But then again, the National Endowment for the Arts has an $80 million yearly budget, and it’s never provided me anywhere near as much entertainment as Kenneth Starr did.
So now, opponents of the Davis recall are protesting the $35 million that it will cost to have an election. Below, Mike offers a sensible defense of that expense on grounds of improving democracy and such; but I’m willing to make a defense on the basis of pure entertainment value. Boy, it sure will be mighty fun to watch Davis squirm! As an added bonus, we might even end up with the Governator in charge. And as per usual, the West Coast provides amusement for the rest of the country.
Suffrage vs. Suffering in CA
There is almost a unanimous consensus that the petition to have a recall election against Gray Davis is dangerously misguided. Some might see the convergence of normally fractious voices of the citizens’ intelligentsia (AKA blogosphere) as proof that this is, in fact, a really bad idea. I, on the other hand, see this is an opportunity for an exercise in contrarian thinking.
The argument is that this election is (a) expensive (b) destabilizing and (c) not likely to lead to better government for the Golden State.
It is impossible to argue that this election will not be expensive if you think $35 million is real money and not chump change. But if you believe that this election could in fact buy better, more responsible government for California, then $35 million isn’t so much. Hell, it’s less than 1/1000th of the state’s $38 billion deficit.
So the question, then, is whether this can produce better policy in the short-term (i.e., over the next four years) and/or whether this might produce improved long-term governance through structural adjustment.
I think that there’s a chance that the answer to both is possibly “yes.” But first, let’s note that there’s a huge positive externality for the rest of the country, regardless of the outcome. This is one of those “federalist moments” during which a single state really serves as a “laboratory of democracy” by trying something completely different from what is policy in other states. California’s groundbreaking Proposition 13 worked in this way when it showed the way to cap taxes is through tax and expenditure limitation (TEL) legislation.
But that, of course, reduces Californians to the role of guinea pigs, which is something that they might not be happy about.
Here are two reasons why Gray Davis’s recall might help California in the long- and short term. Let’s take the short term first. Davis’s replacement will have a mandate to save California from its budget crisis. Anything that makes the fiduciary relationship between citizen and public servant more explicit is to be lauded. If the Davis replacement can convincingly assert that their primary motivation is to get California on firm fiscal footing so that the government and state can recover its normality, the citizens will be able to buttress their support for making the hard choices (spending cuts) needed to overcome the current fiasco.
Next, and more importantly, are the doomsday predictions that this undermines the essential stability and orderliness of regular elections. It might be noted that regular elections give politicians the chance to do both (a) what is necessary but unpopular (early in the term) and (b) what the people demand (towards election time). But why must we assume that this irregular recall function will be abused by Golden State voters? Californians are currently getting an object lesson in how expensive, complicated, and time consuming this process is. Perhaps they will not take so lightly the prospect of recall elections in the future. Maybe this will be a sort of “emergency exit” to be used during special occasions of democratic failure rather than a vehicle for the whimsical ambitions of those who are out of power. The truth is that, as of now, we just don’t know.
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Please Don’t Ask Me, I Might Say Yes
Tyler Cowen raises an interesting question vis-à-vis the national Do Not Call list, inadvertently making me realize that the Do Not Call issue is actually related to my current research.
Tyler observes that some people who register on the DNC list might be protecting themselves from, well, themselves. They are afraid that if telemarketers call them, they might actually be tempted to buy stuff they don’t really need. Like Ulysses, they tie themselves to the mast to restrain their future, more impulsive, selves.
As it happens, my primary research project at the moment is economic models of internal conflict – specifically, meta-preferences and multiple selves. Tyler’s own research on the topic has been useful to me in forming my perspective on the matter. And he repeats his most significant point in his post on telemarketers: “Why should we assume that the rational controlling self is the only one who counts (do you really want a life devoid of spontaneity?)? Why should our government be in the business of altering this balance in one direction or the other?” In other words, if we really do have multiple selves with conflicting interests, there is no particular reason to have institutions that favor one self over another.
Tyler suggests that these considerations might force libertarians who support the DNC list to support a variety of non-libertarian policies: “How many of you out there will be consistent? How about a government list for people who do not want to be allowed into casinos? Do not want to be allowed to buy cigarettes at the local 7-11? Do not want to be allowed to order dessert?” In short, are we willing to embrace a variety policies designed to protect people, not from each other, but from themselves?
But this argument only works *if* protecting people against themselves was the justification for the DNC list. That is not, in fact, the justification that libertarians (like Julian and me) offered in defense of the list. The main argument was that the DNC list is functionally equivalent to a “no trespassing” or “no soliciting” sign on one’s front lawn, and thus a simple application of property rights. Now, it’s certainly possible that I put a “no trespassing” sign on my lawn because I fear that Jehovah’s Witnesses might actually be successful in converting me, and therefore my rational self has chosen to constrain my spiritual self. But privileging rational selves over spiritual selves is not the usual justification offered in favor of protecting property rights in land. It just happens that some property owners might use it for that purpose.
And notice that a pure defense-of-property-rights position would not obligate libertarians supporters of the DNC list to support any of the other policies that Tyler cites. In the case of the DNC list, others are prohibited from entering my property. In the case of a no-casino-entry list, others are prohibited from letting me enter their property, even if they want me to and I (apparently) want to.
Admittedly, the discussion gets a bit dicier if we delve into the reasons why we support private property rights in the first place. Consequentialist libertarians like me will often justify private property on grounds that it minimizes externality problems by concentrating the costs and benefits of resource use on an individual. The problem is that if we regard an individual as having multiple selves, then the actions of one self may create externalities (or as some analysts call them, “internalities”) on the other selves. The question, then, is what kind of property rights structure -- if any -- would best allow the multiple selves to cooperate for greatest mutual gain, and whether government policies can or should be evaluated on the basis of how they affect that structure. That’s one of the tricky questions I’m grappling with now, and I don’t have a good answer yet. (At this point, I might still come down on the side of “multiple selves” being a pointless concept, albeit a decent premise for a sit-com -- remember “Herman’s Head”?)
But even if multiple selves are real, and even if government policies do affect the balance of power among them, it doesn’t follow that the DNC list is undesirable (or unlibertarian). In the status quo ante, a person’s multiple selves existed within a de facto property rights regime. A change in policy made on other grounds arguably changes that regime. But if Tyler’s right that there’s no particular reason to favor the long-run self over the impulsive self, it’s also true that there’s no reason to do the reverse, either. And in that case, the multiple selves issue provides us with no grounds to prefer either the status quo ante or the new policy, and thus we focus on the other pros and cons of the policy.
Monday, July 21, 2003
Granny You Can Drive My Car
According to an L.A. Times article, drivers over 75 are responsible for 11% of traffic fatalities in New Hampshire, as compared to 13% nationwide. The difference is attributed to the NH law that requires drivers over the age of 70 to pass driving tests in order to renew their licenses. Eugene points out three major problems with this analysis; I wish to point out two more.
First, neither the 11% nor the 13% figure means anything without a comparison statistic -- specifically, the percentage of all drivers who are over the age of 70. If that figure were significantly smaller than the numbers above, we could conclude that older drivers are in fact more dangerous than others; but if that figure were significantly larger, we could conclude that they are actually less dangerous. So what’s the real figure? I don’t have numbers for drivers, but as a proxy, look at this page with age figures for the U.S. in 2001. After excluding the age groups in which no one can legally drive, people over 70 constitute 11.7% of the remaining population. Hmm… seems pretty close to the 11% and 13% figures. Now, my figures shouldn’t be taken too seriously, because it’s possible that lots of older people are choosing not to drive or are unable to drive, and thus their representation in the driving population could differ from their representation in the population as a whole. But the figures are certainly close enough to give us pause.
[UPDATE: Eugene summarizes a study with more specific figures on the accident frequencies of different demographic groups. The bottom line is that, on average, people over 70 aren't the safest age group of drivers out there, but they're not the most dangerous either. They are safer drivers than teenagers and often safer drivers than people in their 20s.]
Second, a tougher licensing standard applied to any demographic group would reduce the percentage of traffic fatalities attributable to that group, whether or not that group is more dangerous than the general public. What if, for example, we passed a law saying that all Jews had to pass driving tests to renew their licenses (while non-Jews could renew automatically)? Then some Jewish drivers would be weeded from the driving pool, and as a result, the percentage of traffic fatalities attributable to Jews would probably fall. This would be true even if the driving tests were totally uncorrelated to driving competence, simply because they would reduce the total number of Jews on the road. But that would in no way indicate that Jews are less safe drivers than the rest of us. Substitute any other group for Jews and you’d get similar results.
Turnabout Is Fair Play
The ever-hilarious Dan Savage, author of the Savage Love sex advice column (warning: contains sexually explicit content, so be caref… hey, come back here!) is doing an excellent job of spreading the use of “santorum” as the term for an anal-sex-related phenomenon of which Sen. Rick Santorum would certainly disapprove. C’mon everyone, do your part: this is a meme worth propagating.
There is one minor problem, though: there are other people out there with the name Santorum who might not deserve this kind of rough treatment. But when one of Savage’s readers pointed this out, Savage shot her down:
Sorry, SINMLN, but innocent people named Santorum will just have to deal, just like guys named Dick and girls named Peg and people named Lewinsky. If other folks named Santorum are angry, well, they should direct their anger at the jackass senator himself. He brought santorum down on all their heads, not me.Well put. But is what’s sauce for the goose also sauce for the gander? Another reader tries to play turnabout:
I've got a great idea, Dan. Now that your readers have successfully coined the term "santorum," why don't they co-opt the name of another hatemonger? After being fired from his MSNBC talk show for telling a gay caller that he should "get AIDS and die, you pig" and "go eat a sausage and choke on it," shock jock Michael Savage certainly deserves to have his name immortalized as an offensive sex act. As for all the innocent people named Savage out there, they'll just have to deal with it, won't they?D’oh. But Dan cleverly worms his way out, observing that “savage” already has a (more positive) sexual connotation. Lucky for him, else he might have been hoist by his own petard.