Statistical Injustice

Brad DeLong has an ongoing series of One Hundred Interesting Mathematical Computations on his website. Two of the most recent jumped out at me.

First, in OHIMC #10, he describes the letter-switching paradox that I mentioned in a previous post. And unlike the website I cited that time for explanation (because I was too lazy to describe the whole problem and its solution), he gets the moral of the story right.

Second, in OHIMC #9, he describes the false-positive problem that arises in the context of tests for disease. The bottom line is that even if you test positive for a disease, there is actually a surprisingly high chance that you don't have it. The reason, in a nutshell, is that for most diseases - even ones considered epidemics - the vast majority of the population does not have it. As a result, even a small false-positive rate will result in a very large absolute number of people testing positive even though they are disease-free. Even if the test correctly identifies all people who have the disease, they are likely to be a small group compared to those who were false positives. (If this doesn't make sense, go to DeLong's site and follow the math.)

What DeLong doesn't mention is that the false-positive problem is most acute when someone takes a test for a disease without having any particular reason to think he might have it. If there is some a priori reason for thinking you have the disease (e.g., the test is for HIV, and you've been having lots of promiscuous unprotected sex and sharing needles), then the problem is not as severe, though it still exists. I think this is especially relevant in the context of proposals to, for instance, test all school athletes for steroids or drug use. Quite aside from the legal and ethical problems related to invasion of privacy, policies like these will almost assuredly punish far more innocent students than guilty ones. Taking DeLong's sample numbers, but replacing "disease" with "drug use," testing 10,000 athletes would lead to the punishment of 49 drug-users and 199 non-drug users. Of course, DeLong's numbers are only hypothetical; if a larger percentage of the whole athlete population used drugs than in the example, the disparity would not be as severe. But the qualitative result will be the same: lots of innocents getting punished.

Thus, the notion of "probable cause" has statistical as well as legal value. Restricting drug and steroid tests to those students who have evinced other signs of use would at least reduce, though not eliminate, the disparity in punishments meted out. Across-the-board testing is not just a procedural injustice; it also leads to greater substantive injustice.

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Those Wacky Raelians

So the Raelians -- you know, the religious cult that claims to have created the first human clone -- believe that scientifically advanced extra-terrestrials manipulated DNA in order to create all life in Earth. Wow, that's really crazy. Don't they realize that life, along with everything else in heaven and earth, was actually created in just seven days by an omniscient, omnipotent being, who later had a mortal son, who died, was buried, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven?

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Putting Prostitution Back On the Street Where It Belongs

According to a news story I heard on the radio (I couldn't find any articles about it online), the Royal Viking Hotel in Los Angeles is in trouble for allegedly "facilitating" prostitution and other criminal activities. The city council has decided it's time to crack down on the hotel, so they are forcing it - by means of a court to injunction - to stop selling condoms, stop renting rooms for fewer than 12 hours at a time, and stop renting rooms for less than $25 a day.

Wow. Just for the fun of it, let's even suppose you think that outlawing sex between consenting adults when money is involved is a good idea. Let's count how many different ways this injunction gets it wrong.

1. The injunction against condoms punishes only those prostitutes and clients who want to have *safe* sex. This might deter some prostitutes and clients from having sex, but only by encouraging the rest to have sex more dangerously. At best, this part of the injunction will have no effect because prostitutes will just bring their condoms with them. Meanwhile, the regular customers who just want to have sex (with no money involved) will also be deprived of the convenience of buying condoms at the hotel.

2. The prohibition on renting rooms for fewer than 12 hours at a time punishes plenty of people who aren't prostitutes or their clients, such as truck drivers who just need a few hours sleep, or young couples who'd rather not have sex in their parents' homes. Similarly, the prohibition on renting rooms for less than $25 per day is just a price floor, which hurts anyone looking for a cheap place to spend the night.

3. The last two restrictions combined raise the cost of doing business in private - but not the cost of doing so in back alleys, parking lots, and other public places. One of the main arguments that people have against legal prostitution is the potential exposure of children and other sensitive persons to seedy sexual transactions in public places. In that case, does it make sense to discourage prostitutes from taking their business indoors?

I can't think of a more foolhardy approach to fighting prostitution. It encourages exactly those aspects of the business that people finds most objectionable - specifically, spreading disease and conducting private affairs in public spaces. And it does this while punishing law-abiding citizens who want a cheap place to sleep or (why not?) have sex.

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"Ha Ha, Made You Look" Advertising

When TV networks started putting a nearly transparent network logo in the lower righthand corner during programs, I was actually in favor of it. When I'm channel surfing, I like to know what channel I've surfed onto. And if I'm catching the end of a previous show before the show I intend to watch, it's nice to know I'm in the right place.

But then, as anyone who's watched TV in the last two years knows, the logos started growing, traded their transparency for vivid colors, acquired moving graphics, and began adding advertisements for other shows. I figure it won't be long before they develop intelligence and apply for membership in the UN.

The latest travesty: I was watching Law & Order on TNT, and the whole bottom fifth of the screen suddenly turned blue. The words "STORM WARNING!" scrolled across the screen from right to left, and I stopped what I was doing to find out if we were in for another windstorm like the one we had last week, which caused numerous homes to lose power for more than 48 hours. "Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night," it continued, "the TNT broadcast of THE PERFECT STORM, starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg!" What's next - using the Emergency Broadcast System to alert us about changes in the primetime line-up?

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It's Creepy and It's Kooky, Macro Economy!

With respect to the proposals in GWB's new economic "stimulus" plan, some critics have commented on the oddness of proposing long-term solutions to short-term problems. Senator Ted Kennedy's reaction (quoted in this Reuters story) is typical: "To use the need for an immediate economic stimulus as an excuse to enact costly new permanent tax breaks for the wealthy is a cynical and disheartening ploy," said Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The critics are correct from the perspective of old-school Keynesian fiscal policy. The recommended fiscal policy response to a slumping economy usually involves one-time spending increases or tax deductions, not "permanent" changes in the tax code. But guess what: using fiscal policy to deal with macroeconomic cycles is a poor idea anyway. It is incredibly, almost insurmountably difficult to get the size and timing of legislative responses to correspond to the ups and downs of the economy. By the time it's apparent that a fiscal policy response would have been helpful, the window has most likely closed. Current spending increases and tax reductions will have little or no impact on current unemployment rates. Their primary impact will likely be months down the road, when the economy might already have recovered on its own.

So if you want to judge the wisdom of new tax and spending proposals, short-run economic performance is not the correct measure. The appropriate criterion is the probable effect on *long-run* economic growth. And in that regard, GWB's proposals move us in pretty much the right direction, as some Cato scholars argue here, *assuming* they are eventually accompanied by spending cuts. That's a big assumption, unfortunately. Of course, most of GWB's supporters are casting their praise of his proposals in terms of the slumping economy because that's what people are concerned about right now. (But note that all the real praise from the Cato scholars is in terms of "growth," despite the misleading headline about "stimulus.")

As an aside, it's worth noting that the word "permanent" doesn't really mean much in this context anyway. In what sense is any legislation really permanent? Unless there is some kind of supermajority requirement for changing it, as is the case with constitutional provisions, all it takes to reverse a "permanent" law passed by a majority is another law passed by another majority. Short of passing a constitutional amendment, the 2003 Congress and president are utterly incapable of placing binding constraints on any future Congress and president - even if they are the very same people. Calling a tax cut or another change in the law "permanent" has all the power of making a wish with your fingers crossed. Those of us who favor tax cuts will just have to hope that future legislators are willing to stick with them.

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Agora2K

I just noticed that my blog has now gotten over 2000 hits! Very exciting. I just wish I could celebrate by posting a monster-sized blurb on something either really important or incredibly obscure. But blast it, I just couldn't get inspired today. I kept getting distracted by, you know, work.

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Movable Type

While driving home today, I saw an SUV with two huge stickers in its back window, both in huge Gothic type. The one on the left read, "Holy Spirit Fueled," and the other read, "Powered by Jesus." I couldn't help wondering what kind of mileage they were getting, and whether they were using 87, 89, or 93 octane Jesus. And then I wondered if there might be a more spiritual interpretation, like a modern-day version of the Hanukkah story: while driving home from Vegas a few years ago, they realized they had only enough gasoline left for one more mile, and yet that gasoline miraculously allowed the car to travel the eight miles down the interstate to the nearest gas station.

Seriously, though, I'm curious as to the motivation behind these and most other bumper stickers. Are there people whose political and religious viewpoints are influenced by the messages they see plastered on strangers' vehicles? I'm reminded of an article in The Onion's _Our Dumb Century_ from 1973: "Bumper Sticker Industry Applauds Roe v. Wade Decision." The final paragraph of the article pretty much says it all: "The historic ruling means bumper-sticker creators will dictate the terms of America's abortion dialogue in the coming years. Said [Bumper-Sticker Manufacturers of America President Karl] Steinholz, 'This debate has now moved out of the courts and onto the bumpers of cars, where it belongs.'"

I suspect, as my sister suggested to me, that no one really thinks they'll change anyone's mind with a bumper sticker, and therefore most bumper stickers are just expressions of belief - commonly, the belief that "I'm better than you." Still, there are some bumper stickers I do enjoy, typically ones designed for the entertainment (as opposed to moral and political education) of other drivers. Many of these make fun of other bumper stickers, "Jeez if you love Honkus" being the classic. "Nuke the whales" was funny once, but is now tired. That's the problem, of course; the humor may be gone, but the bumper sticker lingers on.

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The Origin of Theses

In the process of researching the alcohol industry, I unexpectedly ran across the origin of the economics profession's favorite proverb, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." It began in the pre-Prohibition days, when manufacturers of alcohol could, and often did, sell their wares directly to customers. This practice is now forbidden by post-Prohibition federal and state laws that effectively mandate a three-tier alcohol industry in which distributors must stand between manufacturers and retailers. According to a 1997 story (not available online without payment) from the Orange County Register,

The purpose of these laws was to eliminate predatory turn-of-the-century marketing such as that practiced by "tied houses" - distiller-owned taverns that offered salt pork or free sandwiches to induce working men to visit and drink. The sobriety and wages lost to this "tied-house evil" spawned the phrase, "There's no such thing as a free lunch. "

An interesting story, despite the highly questionable use of the word "predatory."

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Regifting

According to this Reuters story, the Christmas shopping season may be "extended" this year because of the unexpectedly large number of people who gave gift certificates. Tell me about it. When I was in Restoration Hardware about a week before Christmas, I overheard an employee ask her manager if it was okay for a customer to use a gift certificate to buy… another gift certificate. (The answer was yes.)

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Adverb to the Wise

I asked my brother Neal (the linguist) if he knew of any nouns that have been turned into adverbs aside from shotgun and bitch, as discussed in a previous post. After pondering for a while, he observed that many nouns have become adjective-modifying adverbs in phrases like "/ice/ cold," "/bone/ dry," and "/rock/ hard." But he couldn't think of any others nouns that are verb-modifying adverbs as in the phrases "ride /shotgun/" and "ride /bitch/."

Then I posed the question to my sister Ellen, who came up with commando, as in the phrase "go /commando/" (i.e., wear pants without underwear). This definitely seemed to fall in the same class, with shotgun and bitch, of verb-modifying adverbs. But that got Neal thinking, and he said there's a good argument that *none* of these are really adverbs, because their seemingly adverbial uses are too situation-specific. There's nothing you can do bitch or shotgun except ride (or sometimes sit); there's nothing you can do commando except go; etc. Arguably, then, we don't really have verbs with adverbs here - we just have verbs that happen to have spaces in them, in a manner similar to the verb "put up with."

That sounds right to me. But then again, there seem to be other adverbs that are at least awkward when paired with anything other than a specific verb. There are few things one would do fitfully except sleep, for example. So how many different verbs must a new prospective adverb be used with before it becomes a real adverb?

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Rawls and the Precautionary Principle

Sasha Volokh, Mark Kleiman, and Kieran Healy have had an interesting exchange about the justification, if any, for the so-called precautionary principle. In a nutshell, this principle says that if there is uncertainty about the possible negative effects of a new technology (or the equivalent), society ought to resist using it until its negative effects are known. (Sasha defines it as “the principle that we should avoid new technologies unless they're proven harmless,” but that may be a little overstated – it’s not that any harm at all is unacceptable, but that unknown risks of harm are unacceptable.) I’ve always found this principle problematic, in part because I think it bears a strong resemblance to John Rawls’s maximin principle, and it shares a common error: relying on an absurdly high degree of risk aversion.

If the analogy seems strained, bear with me. Rawls’s political theory (and I should admit at this point that what I know of Rawls is largely second-hand, as I’ve only read bits and pieces of his actual writing) asks us to imagine ourselves behind a “veil ignorance,” where each person lacks knowledge about what position he will occupy in society. You don’t know, yet, whether you’ll be the best-off person, or the worst-off person, or someone in between. Behind the veil, the future members of society will negotiate to an agreement about what sort of society they will live in. Okay, so far so good; although some philosophical objections could be made to this construct, it makes enough sense for me to accept it for the sake of argument. The problem is Rawls’s conclusion: that people behind the veil of ignorance will accept the “maximin principle” (not Rawls’s term, but a commonly used name for it), which says to choose the form of society that maximizes the position of the worst off person.

It should be apparent that this is an incredibly risk-averse approach, because it focuses exclusively on the worst-case scenario. No increase in the wealth or happiness from any or all of the other positions in society can compensate for the slightest loss of wealth or happiness for the person at the bottom. If this principle were applied to investment decisions, investors would never make high-risk high-return investments, or even medium-risk medium-return investments, when low- or zero-risk investments were available. To me, it is far more plausible that people behind the veil of ignorance would be either risk neutral (assigning equal weight to all possible outcomes) or moderately risk averse (giving somewhat more weight to the worse outcomes).

My philosopher friends tell me Rawls has responded to this objection by saying that, behind the veil of ignorance, you cannot assume you have an equal likelihood of being each person in a society. In other words, if there are N people in a society, you can’t assume there’s a 1/N chance of being each one. Now, I have no idea how Rawls justifies this additional assumption, but it makes zero sense to me. I can’t imagine how he would justify any alternative probability distribution (e.g., double the weight on the worst-off, half the weight on the best-off) unless he wants the “probabilities” to represents a value-based weighting of outcomes instead of likelihood-based weighting. If so, then he’s building into the construct some of the conclusions that people behind the veil were supposed to arrive at themselves through negotiation. But my understanding is that Rawls is not positing some other distribution -- he’s rejecting the notion of people behind the veil of ignorance employing any kind of probability distribution *at all*. This, however, is impossible; as one of my grad school professors always put it, “You cannot have no beliefs.” You may have more or less justified beliefs, but lacking any beliefs at all leads to paradoxes like the letter-switching paradox.

(Note: On this page, the author gives a pretty good explanation of how to resolve the paradox, except that he gets the “moral of the story” wrong. You must have beliefs about the decision procedures of Johnny Moss’s ghost, even if you don’t know the procedure. Otherwise, the mathematical argument for always switching still works.)

So how does this all relate to the precautionary principle? In the Rawlsian scenario, the uncertainty is about “who you will be” in a future society. In the new technology scenario, the uncertainty is about which conceivable effects (positive and negative) the technology will actually have. In both scenarios, a sensible approach is to take into account all the possible outcomes with their associated probabilities, but the maximin and precautionary principles ask us instead to focus on the worst conceivable outcome.

In addition, both proponents of both principles try to justify their extreme risk aversion by saying that we lack a probability distribution. Rawls did this by simply asserting that we don’t have one behind the veil. The defenders of the precautionary principle do this by saying that so little is known about some new technologies that we don’t know what probabilities to attach to different outcomes. While it’s true that we sometimes lack good information, that doesn’t mean that we “have no beliefs” – it just means that we have less confidence in them.

My comments here are probably pretty unhelpful when it comes to the much more difficult question of how we *should* weight good and bad possible outcomes, given that most of us are somewhat (but not ridiculously) risk averse. My point is merely that the uncomfortable in-between space is where our actual decisions do, and should, take place.

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Unfinished Business

Amy sent me a few more suggestions for clever group names:

A bouquet of florists
A yard of landscapers
A sextet of prostitutes (but why would they travel only in 6’s?)

She also favors “fathom” as the group name for philosophers.

Unlike the group name game, the best-and-worst Xmas song contest only got two entries – mine and my sister’s. Consequently, every category had either a unanimous winner or a 50-50 tie. Here they are:

Best Classic: Tie – “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “O Holy Night”
Worst Classic: Tie – “The 12 Days of Christmas” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”
Best Modern: “Christmas Wrapping” by the Waitresses
Worst Modern: “Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart” by Wham!

There were plenty of honorable mentions in the worst modern category, and I don’t want to leave them out: “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth,” Bruce Springsteen’s version of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmas Time,” and any Christmas song done by the Chipmunks.

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Word Repurposing

I can think of many nouns that have been verbed: "I tried to /knife/ the intruder," "Jones will /chair/ the meeting," etc. I can also think of many verbs that have been nouned: "Have a /go/ at solving the puzzle," "He made one /throw/ of the dice," etc. The transformation of one part of speech into another is a pretty common phenomenon in English. But I can think of only two nouns that have been adverbed, and both concern one's position in a moving vehicle. If you "ride /shotgun/" in a car, you ride in the front passenger seat; if you "ride /bitch/," you sit between the driver and the front passenger (or, sometimes, in the middle of the back seat). Can anyone out there think of other examples of nouns being used as adverbs? (To count, it must be possible to use the word as an adverb without any suffixes like "-ly" attached to change its form.)

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Contretemp-tations

Mark Kleiman describes a very common type of situation:

Sometimes people do damage to themselves, or incur the risk of doing so, at the (often not disinterested) prompting of others. Call this pattern "temptation," and the parties the tempted and the tempter. The tempted, and their friends, often blame the tempters for the bad results, and sometimes sue them or demand that the activity of temptation be constrained by law. The tempters, and their friends, always respond that the tempted need to start taking personal responsibility for their actions, and that the tempters can't be held accountable for the foolish acts of others.

Mark considers the proposition that "the blamelessness of the tempter follows from the responsibility of the tempted" to be self-evidently fallacious. But he also observes that "many other people" (I am one of them) think this proposition true. So Mark sets out to explain why we think so, and he settles on the idea that we have fallaciously equated moral responsibility with a probability density function, thus concluding that all moral responsibilities must sum to one.

Mark is correct that moral responsibilities need not sum to one. If John shoots Bill while Eric stabs Bill, both are 100% guilty of murder, after all. But disproval of a fallacious argument in favor of a proposition does not disprove the proposition itself, as there may exist other, valid arguments for the proposition. I wish to make one of them.

In involuntary cases like murder and rape, there is little question that a harm has been done, and the main question is one of apportioning punishment. But in voluntary situations - presumably those Mark has in mind, though he declines to name them - the whole issue is whether a harm has actually been done. If I choose to smoke cigarettes, and later I develop lung cancer, this may seem to be, factually speaking, a harm; clearly I'd rather not have cancer. But we must take an all-things-considered perspective, as the risk of lung cancer might have been a cost I was willing to bear because of the perceived advantages of smoking. Likewise for other risky activities, like snow skiing and eating high-cholesterol foods. For there to have been a harm *on net*, the subjective value of costs must have exceeded the subjective value of the benefits - and the only person who is in a position to know is the person who actually experiences them. What we want is a set of legal and moral rules that encourage people to do things that affect their well-being when, and only when, the expected benefits exceed the expected costs. When an individual is held personally responsible for his own voluntary choices that affect his well-being, the costs and benefits are concentrated in one place (his mind), and he thus has an incentive to make the correct choice.

Since moral responsibilities need not sum to one, Mark might argue that we could punish the tempter as well as the tempted when bad results occur. But placing responsibility on the tempter creates a doubly bad incentive: First, if the individual whose well-being is affected is compensated by the other party (as occurs when the damage payments are awarded to the "victim"), his *perceived* costs from the activity are reduced, and as a result he will be more inclined to engage in activities whose costs exceed the benefits. This is the moral hazard problem. Second, the tempter may be deterred from providing opportunities to engage in the activity even when the activity is on net desirable. (This argument holds even if damages are not awarded to the victim.)

There is an exception to the general rule I've stated here, and that occurs when the tempter possesses but withholds information that *might* be relevant to the tempted's decision. If we want to encourage decisions that take into account all costs and benefits, then we need legal and moral rules that encourage disclosure of cost- and benefit-relevant information. This is the source of the one quasi-plausible argument against the tobacco companies in the recent lawsuits: that old enough smokers might have chosen not to smoke if the tobacco companies had been more forthcoming with information they had (and that was not available from other sources) about the health consequences of smoking. (I say "quasi-plausible" because I'm not convinced that potential smokers were really that clueless about the likely effects of smoking, nor that it would have made a difference if they had been informed. But at least the form of the argument is right.)

In short, when the very desirability of an activity is in question, simple causality (in the sense of necessary conditions) is not the relevant issue. It's true that the tempter's offer may be a necessary condition for the outcome to occur - but in order to know whether the outcome is a "harm," it is necessary to consult the preferences of the tempted. Placing moral and legal responsibility on the tempted creates the appropriate incentives to encourage value-increasing and discourage value-decreasing activities, and placing responsibility elsewhere mucks up the decision calculus unless it encourages the dissemination of relevant information.

One final caveat: I am thinking primarily in legal terms, because I'm concerned about how issues like this should be treated as a matter of policy. It's possible Mark wished to restrict his comments to the moral realm only. If so, I might concede that the tempter should "feel bad" and is thus not "blameless." But as soon as we start talking about meting out reward and punishment, whether in the legal realm or otherwise, I fall back on the arguments above.

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Teachers Fight for Lower Wages!

"Public school systems in Nebraska are prohibited from offering signing bonuses or other incentives to attract or retain qualified teachers because doing so violates collective bargaining agreements with teacher unions, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday." This is a perfect example of how the teachers unions' stranglehold on the public schools stifles attempts to improve the quality of education. It is also yet another argument for a school choice program that does not exclude private schools.

What's especially ironic about this situation is that the teachers unions constantly complain that teachers don't get paid enough. Their solution for every failing public school is to increase budgets and pay teachers more. But when a school actually tries to pay a teacher more money, the unions oppose it unless the pay raise is across the board. Aside from putting a cap on salaries, the across-the-board policy also prevents schools from paying the wage premiums required to attract teachers - specifically, math and science teachers - who have lucrative opportunities outside the teaching profession. (The case at hand involved an industrial arts teacher, but the principle is the same.) Unless schools start offering more for teachers with a higher opportunity cost, they will continue to produce students with inadequate quantitative skills.

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Tort-uous Economic Logic

Sasha's recent post on the subject of tort liability prompted to Mark to make a thoughtful reply. I'm too lazy to summarize the whole interchange, so I'll just let you follow the links. However, I had to respond to the following passage in Mark's post:

"[Sasha] says that ideally an entrepreneur would get all the benefits and pay all the costs of his innovation, and argues that tort damages are part of 'all the costs.' But -- putting aside the external-benefit point, which Sasha makes -- the only entrepreneur who gets all the benefits of his innovation is the hypothetical price-discriminating monopolist. In the more usual case, there are consumers' surpluses. (Being forbidden to buy a vaccine at the market price would leave the consumer worse off.)
"So if we stick manufacturers with all the costs, but can't secure for them all the benefits, then the overall level of market activity will be suboptimally low."

I was about to reply by saying that Mark is looking at total costs and benefits, whereas marginal costs and benefits are the relevant parameters. A firm doesn't have to be a perfect price discriminator to face the full *marginal* benefit of his production decision, because the valuation of the marginal consumer is generally reflected in the maket price (unless this is a good whose production creates external benefits).

But Mark is one smart guy, and he seems to know something about economics, so I figured he probably wasn't making that mistake. Then I realized he might be talking about a different problem: external costs that are fixed costs, incurred as a one-time result of innovation (the word he used in his post) or business start-up. If so, then his argument goes through, albeit as a special case. The problem is not that any existing firm underproduces, but that there are not enough firms producing in the first place. The threat of liability prevents them from opening, even though the total benefits of the activity (as measured by consumer surplus) exceed the total costs.

I was going to post that instead, and then I realized Mark might be talking about yet another issue: the general theory of the second-best, which implies (among many other things) that some amount of monopoly power can be desirable in the presence of externalities, and vice versa, because the underproduction attributable to monopoly power can counteract the overproduction attributable to negative externalities. As a result, imposing liability for negative externalities can result in underproduction.

So now I'm really unsure what exact point Mark was making. I guess I'll email him, point him to this post, and ask him to let me know. For now, I will just make the general (and vague) observation that all of this analysis is conducted without any reference to the Coase Theorem, whose main lesson is that external costs are not *necessarily* ignored by decision-makers; whether they are considered adequately will depend on both transaction costs and the institutional structure.

UPDATE: Mark informs me that my interpretation #2 (external costs that are fixed) was what he meant.

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The Joy of Commerce

As anyone who has visited my apartment and seen my two Christmas trees can attest, I love this time of year. And why do I love it so much? Well, the decorations are pretty, and (some of) the music is nice, but what I really like is… the commercialism.

It probably sounds like I'm trying to be a contrarian, bucking the traditionalists who are fond of reminding us that "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" and that all this crass materialism degrades the holiday. But actually, despite my atheism, I think I'm the truer traditionalist here. As modern-day pagans and some very fundamentalist Christians love to remind us, the origins of Christmas stretch back to the ancient pagan rituals like Saturnalia and Alban Arthuan that were celebrated long before the time of Christ. But this point has been made so often that it's become hackneyed (just do a Google search on "Christmas origin pagan festival"), so let me try to say something slightly different.

The old pagan rituals were, for the most part, harvest festivals. They celebrated the abundance of the food available after the harvest. There was much feasting and gift-giving during this time of plenty. Even in years when the harvest was poor, the holiday was celebrated in the hope of a better harvest the next year -- and because, well, any harvest is better than no harvest at all. In modern times, of course, society is no longer focused on agriculture, so the "harvest" part of the story has naturally faded. But I think it can be interpreted more broadly to mean any abundance of material production. In the modern capitalist era, we celebrate the astounding harvest of goods and services that are available to us. In good years, we splurge with our Christmas bonuses. In not-so-good years, we still celebrate (if a bit more frugally) because we realize -- or at least we should realize -- that we still live in one of the most comfortable and abundant times and places in history. Throughout the ages, poverty has been the norm for the vast majority of people; in modern Western societies, poverty is the exception. That's something truly worth celebrating, even as we try to deal with the poverty that remains.

And that's why I love the commercialism of Christmas. Even when I see the bits of commercialism that irk me -- like those damnable dancing-singing Santas -- I rejoice that I live in a society that can afford such frivolities. Commercialism is the visible manifestation of commerce, the production and trade of goods and services. It is a reminder of how rich we are.

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Pro Bono by Proxy

Sasha Volokh observes that most lawyers at big law firms still perform fewer than the recommended 50 hours of pro bono legal work each year, despite recent gains. The problem, of course, is that performing pro bono work can entail a considerable opportunity cost in terms of the forgone revenues the lawyers could have generated during those hours. In order to encourage greater provision of legal services to the poor, some law schools are now encouraging their graduates to start "neighborhood law practices" whose purpose is to provide low-cost legal services, a.k.a. "low bono" work. But this approach doesn't eliminate the opportunity cost problem - it just concentrates it on a smaller number of individuals, the attorneys who practice at such firms. As Sasha says, "Trying to get many lawyers to do a few pro bono cases may be a better strategy than convincing more people to take a very substantial salary cut to provide services to the poor."

I wonder if there's a potential third way here. If big-firm lawyers wish to "do the right thing," but the opportunity cost is simply too high, then perhaps they should make contributions to lawyers or firms that specialize in pro bono work. Say I'm a corporate lawyer who contributes 40 pro bono hours per year, but the cost of contributing another 10 (to reach the recommended 50) is just too high. Then I do my corporate work instead, and then contribute part of my earnings to pay someone else to do another 10 on my behalf. This strategy could lead to just as much or more pro bono work getting done at lower cost, because the hours would be shifted from attorneys with higher opportunity cost to lawyers with lower opportunity cost.

The potential downside is that the high-octane corporate lawyers might be *better* lawyers, in which case the transfer of hours to other lawyers could lower the quality of service rendered to the poor. But I think this problem is likely to be slight, for at least three reasons. First, I suspect the biggest problem for many poor people is not having representation *at all*, and this plan would likely increase the number of service hours provided. Second, there are presumably gains from specialization in the legal profession. Some lawyers are better at corporate work, while others are more talented at providing the kind of services most often required by the poor. This proposal would tend to shift the pro bono work to those most skilled at it. Third, if corporate lawyers really are better, the main reason is the higher compensation they receive. The contribution of funds to firms that specialize in pro bono would attract higher quality attorneys to those positions, at least on the margin.

I suspect the main hurdle for this proposal would be opposition to the idea of discharging one's ethical duties with personal checks instead of effort. If so, I think our ethical standards need revising. The duty to help others does not imply a duty to help them in a more costly fashion simply because it's more "personal." Personal contact can be valuable for the practitioner in terms of moral growth and development of character, but perhaps something less than 50 hours a year is sufficient to achieve that benefit. Why not satisfy the rest of one's ethical obligations with cash?

ADDENDUM: If no one's coined it yet, I hereby lay claim to authorship of the label "proxy bono."

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Collective Consciousness

Ah, so I've finally gotten a slew of nominations for my clever group names contest. It's actually not a competition, only an exhibition -- so please, no wagering. Here are some of the best entries so far.

My sister Ellen suggests:

A batch of chefs
A population of ecologists
A litter of veterinarians
A gross of sanitation engineers
A cord of loggers
A ring of jewelers

When I mentioned sanitation engineers to Olivia, she suggested "shitload" might be more appropos.

Julian adds the following suggestions:

An E(x)E(y)(x?y) of logicians
An updraft (or a babble?) of pundits
A gush of liberals
A thump of fundamentalists
A Lott of racist senators
An indignation of activists

Radley has posted a whole list on his blog, so I'll just repost my favorites:

A rash of brothel patrons
A collective of socialists
A categorizing-by-species-is-artificial- and-degrading-to-the-uniqueness-and-authenticity- of-each-individual-and-therefore-this-entire-exercise -is-empty-and-moot of deconstructionists
A barefoot-nun-playing-a-melted- purple-trumpet of surrealists

Visit Radley's comments page for many others suggested by his readers.

Kevin Grinberg adds the following:

An array of computer scientists
A compendium of librarians

Will informs me that, much as he might like "a bewilderment of philosophers," the Philosophical Lexicon has already designated "cohen" as the collective term for philosophers. (It's allegedly a portmanteau of "cohort" and "coven," but there are also many philosophers with the last name Cohen.)

Finally, I have a few more suggestions of my own:

A sample of statisticians
A ream of accountants
A casket of morticians

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The New Voucher System, Minus the Vouchers

This L. A. Times editorial discusses the perverse incentives created by a recent directive from the Department of Education (enabled by the No Child Left Behind Act), which says that "[s]tudents at the lowest-performing schools can transfer to a better school in the same district even if it's full. … The only exception is if the crowding would violate safety codes." The problem with this requirement is that it gives both good and bad schools exactly the wrong incentives. The bad schools have an incentive to get worse -- or at least not get any better -- so that students will leave. And the good schools have an incentive to diminish their performance in order to avoid attracting more students. As the Times editorial notes, "It's hard to see the benefit in turning good campuses into cramped encampments and in rewarding a successful principal and fine faculty by dumping more work and bigger class sizes on them."

These are the same kind of complaints often lodged against school voucher programs, but in this case they're right -- and they are a powerful indictment of the public school system, not market-based solutions. Can you think of any private industry in which consumers are regularly regarded as liabilities? In which growing demand for your company's product is a burden and a curse? Public schools have an incentive to reduce the number of students they serve because even when students are allowed to move (as under the new directive), they are not allowed to take their money with them. Under a voucher system, losing a student would mean losing funding, and attracting a student would mean attracting funding. Failing schools would have to scale down and fire under-performing teachers. Successful schools would receive regular infusions of cash, which they could use to expand their operations, buy new equipment and facilities, and make their valuable services available to more students. But none of this will be possible until we break the public school monopoly and create a functioning market in education.

ADDENDUM: To the extent that public school funds are allocated on the basis of enrollment, the Department of Education's edict could be an improvement over the status quo. The worst schools would be losing their funding as they lost their students. For the better schools, however, additional funds with additional students are not necessarily desirable unless the school has the discretion to expand using those funds. This is not something easily done in the command-and-control public system. Allowing students to take their money to private schools, rather than forcing the best public schools to accept them even if they think doing so would degrade the quality of education, would be a better move.

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Non Vultis Contendere?

I know somebody's reading this page, because the hit counter rises by about 25 a day, but apparently none of my readers feel like playing my silly games. So far I've received one submission for my best and worst Christmas songs contest, and zero submissions for my clever group names contest. Geez, doesn't anybody goof off at work any more?

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Break Out Your Tie-Dyes and Bellbottoms

In re Rockwell's problematic calculations (below), Franklin Harris asks:

I wonder how many years back you really do have to go to find a federal government of the size that could be paid for sans present income tax revenue?

Good question. By my calculations, we'd have to set the time circuits for 1974.

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Economic Sophistry on Your Right

I found the following in an article by Lew Rockwell:

Let's not reform taxes. Let's eliminate them, starting with the income tax. That is not unrealistic. The income tax this year will yield $1 trillion for the federal government. Cutting that amount gives us a budget equal to the federal budget of 1987. Was the government intolerably small back then?

Needless to say, I was suspicious. Government has certainly grown since 1987, but I couldn't believe it had grown that much. I strongly suspected that Rockwell had failed to adjust for inflation, but I was too lazy to prove it. But today, a colleague to whom I'd mentioned the article pointed me to the right numbers in a public finance book, which I confirmed using online government statistics. In 2002 (estimated), the government spent $1,827.5 billion, of which $879.5 billion came from individual income taxes. The difference is $948 billion, or just under $1 trillion, of revenue from sources other than individual income taxes. And indeed, it turns out the government spent 1,004.1 billion in 1987, or just over $1 trillion. So Rockwell appears to be correct -- except that all of these are nominal figures.

Once we adjust for inflation to put things in real terms, it turns out that $948 billion of current dollars is worth only $594 billion of 1987 dollars. In other words, abolishing the individual income tax would only leave us with enough money to cover about 59% of the expenditures we had in 1987. Now, don't get me wrong -- I'd love to see the federal budget slashed to 59% of its 1987 size, or smaller for that matter. But let's be honest about it: abolishing the individual income tax (without replacing it with something else) means radically downsizing government. No two ways about it.

Rockwell errs in a couple of other ways as well. In arguing against the consumption tax, he responds to the claim that a consumption tax doesn't tax savings as follows:

But the government should not be in the business of prodding us into a particular pattern of saving and consumption. It should leave that up to us. Saving is great to the extent it reflects individual preferences. Consumption is great in the same way. But there is no way to know a priori what the right mix should be.

The question, then, is how different taxes affect the savings-consumption trade off. It turns out (if you do the math) that an income tax biases people toward greater consumption by altering the effective rate of interest, whereas a consumption tax is neutral in that regard. So if Rockwell really believes that government should not "prod us into a particular pattern of savings and consumption," he should favor the consumption tax as an alternative to the income tax. (He is right, however, the politicians might cleverly introduce a consumption tax and then conveniently "forget" to repeal the income tax it was supposed to replace.) Rockwell continues:

And think of this: the degree to which the consumption tax discourages consumption is the same degree to which it does not raise revenue. How does the tax-hungry state deal with that paradox?

There is no paradox here. The extent to which *any* tax discourages the taxed activity (consumption, smoking, whatever) is the extent to which it does not raise revenue. If the demand for (or supply of) the activity were perfectly elastic, then no revenue would be raised at all, as people would just quit the activity altogether. If it were perfectly inelastic, then the government could raise as much revenue as it wanted without affecting the activity level at all. But in the real world, almost nothing in life is perfectly elastic or inelastic -- and that means the government can raise (some) revenue while simultaneously reducing (but not eliminating) the activity.

I know Lew Rockwell wants to reduce the size of government, and I sympathize. But fallacious and economically unsound arguments will get us nowhere.

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Constitutional Cognitive Dissonance

Mark Kleiman's response to my comments below about constitutional mustard, which I'll pass on with relish (sorry):

I should have said that such a decision would make me happy substantively, though not procedurally. It's more or less the position of a lawyer winning a motion he mostly thinks he deserved to lose.

Makes sense to me.

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Passing the Constitutional Mustard

Stuart Banner observes, correctly I think, that people's opinions about constitutional questions have an uncanny way of tracking their opinions about the desirability of the related policies. In other words, it's rare to hear someone say, "I favor X, but I realize X is unconstitutional," or "I oppose X, but I recognize that it's constitutional." Gun control is a nice example -- the gun controllers are sure that the Second Amendment only protects states' right to have a national guard, whereas gun advocates are sure it protects an individual right to bear arms.

Mark Kleiman, though, appears to be an exception to the rule when it comes to anti-sodomy laws. In his words, "I think that anti-sodomy laws are a thoroughly bad idea, and that politicians who support them are mostly pandering to prejudice. But I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that those laws are unconstitutional." This is a respectable position, in large part for its willingness to admit the Constitution doesn't always say exactly what you want it to say.

However, Kleiman ends by saying this: "I'll be happy if the Court reverses Bowers [the 1986 Supreme Court decision that refused to strike down a Georgia anti-sodomy law], and even happier if its doing so, or failing to do so, helps split the Republican coalition. That's not the same thing, however, as thinking that striking down the law would be right as a matter of Constitutional interpretation." In other words, Kleiman is saying that the Constitution allows anti-sodomy laws, but that he'd be happy to see the Supreme Court strike them down anyway. (Unless there's some way to reverse Bowers while upholding anti-sodomy laws? I don't see it.) This strikes me as a profoundly anti-constitutionalist position, and it undermines Kleiman's status as a counterexample to Banner's Law. It's easy to say that the Constitution disagrees with your ideological position if you don't think it's important for the Supreme Court to uphold the Constitution! So perhaps Banner's Law should be modified like so: *for people who think upholding the Constitution is important*, their views on constitutionality have a strong tendency to reflect their ideological viewpoints.

(Just for the record: I'm opposed to anti-sodomy laws, but I'm ambivalent on the constitutional question. Maybe I'll blog my reasons later.)

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Group Dynamics

As I walked back from lunch today with three other economists, we passed by the college dean, who asked if this would be called a "gaggle of economists." This got us speculating about the appropriate group names for professions. These labels exist already for groups of animals ("murder of crows," "exaltation of larks," etc.). Why not for humans? We had the following ideas:

An optimization of economists
A set of mathematicians
A bewilderment of philosophers
An agglomeration of sociologists
A buggery of lawyers

Sorry, I just couldn't resist that last one. Anyway, I'd love to hear people's suggested additions to (or revisions of) the list. I'll post the good ones.

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Percents of Percents

If you heard your income tax was going to rise (or fall) by 5%, what would you assume? Would you think that 5% more (or less) of your total income would be taken by government? Or perhaps, if you understand the marginal structure of the progressive income tax, that 5% more (or less) of your last dollar of income would be taken by government? I suspect that these answers are what most people would think, assuming they thought about it at all. But often, the percentages are actually percentages of percentages, so that the effect (whether from an increase or decrease in taxes) is actually much smaller than it appears.

Most recent example: this article from Citizens for a Sound Economy, an organization I once interned for and generally admire, says that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently signed into law an 18.5% increase in the property tax. Now, I don't know how high property taxes are in NYC, but I can't imagine they're high enough for that figure to be a percentage of actual property values, which tells me that it must be a percentage of a percentage. If, say, the property tax just rose from 5% to 6%, that would be about a 20% increase in the percentage (6% minus 5% divided by 5%).

The article doesn't actually claim that we're talking about 18.5% of your property value being taken by government, so the article isn't grossly misleading. And in any case, CSE is just following the general practice of politicians, journalists, and think tanks in discussing tax changes and proposals. But unless I'm terribly underestimating the American public, I'll bet that a lot of people are misled by statements like this. And at least sometimes, I think the deception is intentional. For instance, when a Republican politician wants to reduce the top marginal tax rate from 35% to 30%, Democrats will say, "The Republicans want to reduce rich people's taxes by over 14 percent [5 as a percentage of 35]"; they will almost never say, "The Republicans want to reduce rich people's taxes by 5 percentage points." (Of course, even the latter statement is misleading, as it overlooks the marginal tax structure - but that's not the point I'm getting at here.) Take note: using percentages of percentages is an equal-opportunity deception: those who want lower taxes will use it to overstate the size on an increase, while those who want higher taxes will use it to overstate the size of a decrease.

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The Strength of Our Convictions

Eugene observes that in some jurisdictions, public defenders are elected. He speculates on what sort of campaigns there would be for such elections ("soft on crime" or "minimum constitutionally adequate defense"?). The seeming problem with electing public defenders is the apparent conflict of interest, as the general public is typically on the side of the prosecution, not the defense. So, here's my modest proposal: Why not have public defenders elected by the prison population, or perhaps by all persons who have been convicted of felonies? They would seem to be the appropriate constituency.

I'm only half serious, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Matching the constituency to the interests represented by the office seems quite natural to me, and it would at least partially overcome the conflict of interest problem (if that problem is indeed serious, which it may not be). In many states, felons are actually denied the right to vote, so there would be a nice symmetry to having at least one election in which they are the *only* people who can vote. On the other hand, all of us have the *potential* to be on the wrong side of the law -- or more importantly, to be *accused* of being on the wrong side of the law -- so we all have some interest in having good public defenders. But the plain fact is that most Americans don't seem to consider that possibility until they find themselves there, whereas the already convicted have faced the reality.

I'd better stop before I convince myself.

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Economic Reasoning With a Hand Up Your Butt

On Friday night I watched "It's a Very Muppet Christmas," and I found it more entertaining than most of Henson Productions' recent output. As a longtime fan of the Muppets, I'm willing to forgive some of their more recent failures (e.g., "Muppets Tonight," an unfortunate attempt to resurrect "The Muppet Show") and give them another chance from time to time. "A Very Muppet Christmas" had me chuckling most of the way through -- especially when I saw that the Muppets' Christmas spectacular was called "Moulin Scrooge."

Unfortunately, the show was marred by its misguided political-economic message. The plot revolves around the efforts of an evil banker (Joan Cusack) to take away the Muppet Theater unless the Muppets make their overdue loan payment by midnight of Christmas Eve (the contractually specified deadline). If she succeeds in repossessing the theater, she plans to turn it into (horrors!) a skeezy nightclub.

Since the primary viewers of the show were probably Muppet devotees like myself, this was a safe message. The Muppets are great -- who would want to see the Muppet Theater get shut down? But here's the problem. If the public really loves to watch the Muppets, then the Muppets should be able to raise enough revenue to cover their operating costs and pay off the loan. If they can't, then clearly people don't want to watch the Muppets, in which case they *should* lose the theater. Resources should be allocated to their most valuable uses, as determined by the revealed preferences of consumers. In the real world, the Muppets are bankable enough that Henson Productions is unlikely to close its doors (though it has been bought and sold a handful of times). But in the fictional world created by the show's own plot, apparently the Muppets aren't so bankable after all.

Predictably, the Muppets stage a huge Christmas show that will bring in *just* enough money to pay off the loan -- which suited me fine. If they can generate the cash, then their existence is economically justified after all. In addition, Cusack's banker proves to be not merely profit-seeking, but actually unethical as well: after somehow getting her hands on both copies of the loan contract, she alters them to move the payment deadline to 6:00pm instead of midnight. That little maneuver enabled me to set aside my ideological objections and accept Cusack as a suitable villain for the remainder of the movie.

Until the end, that is. At the last minute, as Cusack basks in her triumph and orders the Muppets to evacuate the theater, one of the Muppets (an amusing Mexican-stereotype shrimp named Pepe) saves the day. How does he do it? Does he find another copy of the contract? Does he find a means of proving that Cusack had altered the originals? Nope -- he petitions the City Council to declare the Muppet Theater an historical landmark, thereby prohibiting Cusack (or any future owner) from ever using the site for anything except, well, Muppet theatrics. In the end, good prevails over evil -- not because the truth comes out, not because the good creatures of the world demand justice, not because promises are honored and legitimate contracts enforced, but because our friend the government steps in to curtail private property rights!

I know, I know, it probably seems like I'm overreacting. And I am. Still, I can't help but think that plots like this affect young minds (and older ones, for that matter). Pop culture does influence people's political and economic beliefs. Movies and television shows that perpetually cast the businessperson as the bad guy, and the proponents of special privileges from the government as the good guys, do the public a disservice. I believe the Muppets can do better.

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Jack Frost Roasting on an Open Fire

This is the informal poll that I've been giving to all my friends, and that I'm now opening to the public: What is the best Christmas song of all time, and what is the worst Christmas song of all time? I'm accepting nominations in two categories - classic and modern, where modern includes recent covers of old carols. (For the mathematically challenged, that's a total of four songs: best classic, worst classic, best modern, and worst modern.)

I'm not going to draw a sharp line between classic and modern, because I don't know enough about when most of these songs were written anyway. Just specify which category you're nominating each song for. (Kind of like the Oscars: there's no threshold amount of screen time that distinguishes Actors from Supporting Actors. It's just a matter of how they get nominated.)

Send me an email (link to the right) with your nominations. I'll publish the results here in, oh, a week or two. I'll hold a run-off if the numbers justify one. I have my own nominees, of course, but I wouldn't want to bias the results...

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More Pesky Facts

I can't seem to start any blog fights with ideological enemies, but my friends seem to find plenty to argue about. Amy informs me that I'm wrong about the relative prevalence of wife-beating and husband-beating, and she points me to a bunch of evidence indicating that husband-beating is just as common. Rather than point you to the URLs, I'll just point you to Google and let you do a search on "husband beating." A plethora of articles will show up, although they do all seem to rely on the same one or two studies (specifically, Steinmetz 1977). I'm still skeptical. There's such an incredible array of evidence that men are generally more violent than women (just look at any statistics on violent crime or incarceration rates) that it's hard for me to believe things would be any different behind the marital veil. But lacking any specific facts to refute the Steinmetz conclusion, I guess I'll just have to grumble a little bit and admit that I could be wrong. Feh. Anyway, Amy agrees with the broader point of my last post, which is that objections to the term "wife beater" on grounds of offensiveness or discrimination are pretty silly.

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Low-Brow Lexicography

According to this article, there is a minor fracas over the possible addition of "wife beater" (in the sense of an armless undershirt) to the Oxford English Dictionary. Apparently some people find the term offensive. The fracas is minor because the OED's mission is to document, not to dictate, word usage; the word "nigger" also appears in its pages, along with every other offensive term in the English language. I don't think anyone's seriously suggested that the OED's editors should exclude "wife beater" on grounds of political correctness.

But some critics do have a problem with the term itself, and their criticisms make little sense to me. NOW president Kim Gandy claims that using "wife beater" to refer to a garment "trivializes" domestic violence. I fail to see how. My sense is that people who use the term do so derogatorily; they intend to put down those who wear sleeveless undershirts as the kind of cretins who might beat their wives. Clearly, wife beating is seen as a bad thing.

Warren Farrell, a "men's advocate," has an even less comprehensible problem with the term: he says it's offensive to men because it excludes them. "We are so conscious of things like wife beating, but we are not conscious at all about husband beating. Domestic violence is equal opportunity. I wouldn't feel good about people wearing 'husband beaters' either." I don't get it - does Farrell think the term "wife beater" implies that husband beating doesn't occur? Besides, husband beating (and for that matter, anyone beating) is a serious matter, but I can't imagine it's anywhere near as common as wife beating. More common problems naturally get more attention.

And then there's the strange rejoinder of OED editor Jesse Sheidlower: "Apart from fashion writers writing about this, there's no evidence that this term is being used in an offensive way…. People who use this word are not using it to put anyone down." What? Of course they're using it put people down! In its origin, at least, the whole point was to say a person trashy enough to wear a shirt like that would probably beat his wife, too. The term "wife beater" is offensive and meant to be - but toward the beaters, not the wives.

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History Lesson

Oops. My friend Tim Lee (who does not, to my knowledge, have a blog) informs me that my Roman history below is in error.

Actually, the story I learned was rather different. Most of the wandering into the hinterlands that occurred was in the early years of the empire, from Caesar's conquest of Gaul in the late first century BC to the conquest of Germanic tribes in the first century AD and the conquest of Britain in the second century.

When Augustus died in 14 AD, he decreed that the boundaries of the empire should remain as he left them, and with a few minor modifications (Britain being one of the biggest), they did. The Germanic tribes that Augustus failed to conquer were pretty much left alone for the rest of the empire's existence. I believe it was also Augustus who dramatically reduced the Roman military forces by almost half from its peak during the civil wars-- an enormous peace dividend-- and the size of the Roman military was roughly fixed thereafter.

The Romans literally built a giant wall across the continent of Europe, and stationed Roman legions along it. This strategy worked for more than 200 years-- the interior of the empire was more or less safe from marauding invaders from Augustus's death in 14 AD until sometime in the third or fourth century.

According to my history professor, the major causes of the collapse of the empire were internal. First, the Roman government developed a sort of proto-welfare state, which required raising taxes and eventually led to open warfare between tax collectors and wealthy Romans.

Secondly, the Roman legions stationed along the border became more loyal to their local commanders than to the emperor, since many had lived in a particular military outpost for several generations by the third century. As a result, it became increasingly common for a legion to march on Rome to install their commander as emperor. There are periods when Rome got a new emperor every year, each supported by a different regional faction within the army.

Finally, over time the barbarians became more civilized, at least in terms of military tactics and technology. Those closest to the border had the greatest contact with the empire, and so picked up new technologies the quickest. By the time Rome fell, the Germanic tribes just outside of Rome were using essentially the same weapons and tactics as those inside the empire.

When the barbarians finally succeeded in breaching the borders and looting the empire, there was for all intents and purposes no empire left. Rather, there was a patchwork of squabbling factions, with no meaningful control from Rome. At that point, it wouldn't have mattered what Rome had done militarily, because Rome wouldn't have been able to muster much of an army anyway, and they'd have been as likely to turn it on rebellious citizens as invading barbarians.

Tim later added the following addendum:

Most of the German territories were captured under Augustus in 12-9 BC, and Britian was first conquered by Claudius in 43-44 AD. So Rome's borders didn't change much from AD 44 until its fall 300+ years later.

Tim asked me to emphasize that he is not an expert on Roman history - but since I haven't taken a single course covering that subject since high school, I'll happily defer to his authority. I don't think this alters the larger point I was making, though. Engaging in unnecessary battles abroad can distract attention from the real threat banging at our door; while that may not have been the Romans' error, I think it's an error nonetheless.

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New Rome, Meet the New Visigoths

I’m generally skeptical of grand historical theories, but Brink Lindsey presents a pretty persuasive one here. The basic notion is that through much of history, great civilizations have been threatened by primitive nomadic ones, and they have been vulnerable to the threat precisely because of their virtues: division of labor, use of agriculture, relatively fixed location, etc. Although the advent of guns ushered in a long hiatus in this general pattern (which Lindsey explains with plenty of historical detail), the pattern reemerged with a vengeance on September 11. As he puts it, the barbarians are at the gates once more.

Lindsey is on record as something of a war hawk (check out the archives of his blog if you doubt me), so it would not surprise me if the sequels to this article (two are promised) involve justifications for war. So it’s probably worthwhile to mention the anti-war implications of the historical parallels offered in the present article. The Roman Empire, the greatest civilization of its time, fell in large part because of the depredations of marauders and barbarians. And the barbarians were motivated to attack, in part, because of the things that made Rome great, such as its amazing wealth. But was not imperial overstretch also a large part of the problem? The Roman army was constantly on the march, conquering new territories and enforcing its rules on foreign cultures. Yes, the culture of Roman civilization was arguably superior in many respects to the cultures dominated (I’m not arguing the cultural relativist position here), but that’s not the point. The citizens of Rome were threatened by the Roman government’s willingness to incite the ire and violence of other societies.

I wonder if Rome might have survived longer if instead of sending armies into the barbarian hinterlands, it had instead focused its resources on defending its citizens against the barbarians at the gates.

UPDATE, added 2/12/07: A lot of people are finding this old post because of Glenn Reynolds's link to the one below. I should note that I posted a correction to this post here.

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Stop the Rape Penalty

This country has a highly active anti-death penalty movement. But where, I wonder, is the anti-rape penalty movement? That is the question that jumped to mind when I read Stuart Banner's excellent blog post about the strange inconsistency of anti-death penalty activists who cast a blind eye to other needed prison and sentencing reforms. I found the following observation especially telling, given that the supposedly "humane" alternative to death is life in prison:

I'm always reminded of William Witherspoon, whose death sentence was vacated by the Supreme Court in a famous case in the late 1960s. A few months after the decision, when no one was paying much attention to him any longer, Witherspoon was resentenced to 50 to 100 years in prison. His new sentence was "worse than the death penalty," Witherspoon wrote to his lawyer. "Is not 100 years death? All they have done with this sentence is to change the method of execution. Hell, they could have just cut the voltage down and gotten the same effect."

Banner doesn't mention the issue of prison rape, but it was fresh my mind because of a recent article in the L.A. Times Magazine (Nov. 3 edition) by Fred Dickey: "Rape. How Funny Is It?" (available at the L.A. Times website for a price). Most people don't give a damn about prison rape, probably because of the widespread notion that the victims deserve it. But most people would also agree that rape is as serious a crime as murder, or close to it, so you'd think the anti-death penalty crowd would at least weigh in on the subject.

Indeed, I think prison rape is probably a *more* pressing problem than the death penalty, for at least four reasons. First, it's much more common. There are fewer than 100 executions per year in the U.S. (according to the ACLU's death penalty page), whereas the number of prison rapes per year is probably in the thousands or even tens of thousands. It's hard to make a good estimate because the problem hasn't been studied extensively, but in one survey 1 in 10 male prisoners reported having been raped, and there are currently 2 million people serving time in the U.S., so "thousands" is probably a conservative estimate. (See, for instance, the testimony of Lara Stemple of the organization Stop Prisoner Rape.) Second, unlike the death penalty, prison rapes occur without the official approval of a single judge or jury. Third, prison rape is inflicted without any sense of proportionality to the crime. You can go to prison and get raped for a minor drug offense, for instance, whereas the death penalty is only imposed for the very worst crimes. Fourth, prison rape often turns out to be a de facto death penalty, since rates of HIV infection in prison are as much as 10 times the national average.

If the death penalty is a problem, then isn't prison rape an even bigger problem?

UPDATE, added 2/12/07: I see that Glenn Reynolds has linked to this post. Interested readers might want to read this follow-up post on that I wrote a couple of years later on the same topic.

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Reductio Creep

Turns out that Julian blogged on the same phenomenon I did in my last post, and he dubbed it "reductio creep."

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Triumph of the Absurd

There must be a name for this phenomenon: In opposing position X, someone observes that the same arguments that support X would also justify some other position Y that appears, at the time, to be patently wrong. Maybe the point is made as a reductio ad absurdum: "If you support X, you must also support Y, but Y is clearly absurd." X nonetheless gets adopted. Then, some time later, Y is proposed in all seriousness, and the absurd becomes reality.

Exhibit 1. When lawsuits were launched against the tobacco companies (and later, gun manufacturers) for the voluntary actions of their customers, some defenders of the wacky notion of personal responsibility noted that some of the legal arguments employed against the tobacco and gun companies could be targeted against (say) food companies that sell high-fat, high-cholesterol foods. But we would never actually blame companies for individuals' poor eating habits, right? Wrong - now people are suing McDonald's for tempting them to eat unhealthy fast food products.

Exhibit 2. When I hear people defend "buy American" campaigns, I often ask if they would support similar discrimination against products made in American states. Should Texans refuse to buy automobiles manufactured in Michigan? Should New Yorkers resist the urge to buy products made in New Jersey? With the exception of Pace Picante Sauce (which is made in San Antonio, by people who know what picante sauce is supposed to taste like), I thought the very notion ludicrous. Well, it has come to pass. Earlier this week I saw a television advertisement urging me to "Buy Californian." It featured people saying things like, "I'm not an actor, but I am a Californian. And I buy California vegetables." Right - we wouldn't want Californians to become dependent on Florida's farmers, because someday we might go to war with Florida, and then what would we do?

If this phenomenon doesn't already have a name, it needs one. After consultation with my brother the linguist, I propose to call it "absurdum evenit" - the absurd comes to pass. (Or perhaps the more alliterative "absurdum advenit" - the absurd arrives.)

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Canine Evolution

I found this L. A. Times article fascinating. Apparently, millennia of interaction with humans have shaped the genetic code of domesticated dogs in surprising ways.

In the genetic journey from wolf to lapdog, dogs developed a unique genius for sensing human intentions, as the interplay of handler and hound shaped the biology of canine behavior in ways that scientists only now are beginning to understand, new research shows. … From birth, dogs are fluent in the human text of hand gestures and facial expressions. Their ability to understand humans is better than chimpanzees -- humanity's closest relative -- or the gray wolves from which dogs are descended, according to the first direct comparison of the species.

What's most intriguing to me about this (though the article doesn't discuss it) is that it blurs the line between natural selection and artificial selection. Symbiotic relationships are a well established part of biological evolution, and nobody would suggest that those birds that instinctively pick the teeth of hippos are the result of the hippos' attempts at artificial selection. So what, exactly, is different about the relationship between humans and dogs? Is it the fact that people have *deliberately* bred dogs to have certain traits? That's true, but this article draws attention to the many traits of dogs that arose from interaction with humans without deliberate human selection, but as a corollary to it. Dogs with a greater ability to sense human needs and emotions were more likely to survive, even if humans didn't specifically try to breed in those abilities. So where does artificial selection end and natural selection begin (or vice versa)?

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Straphangers and Other Migratory Animals

In response to my post below about L. A. bus service, Amy Phillips observes that New Yorkers aren't that different from Los Angelinos:

They're doing the same thing on the NYC subway system. A group called "Straphangers" (www.straphangers.org) is trying to get the MTA to run more trains, and simultaneously lobbying to keep the fare down when the MTA has said they need to raise it to sustain the system. Apparently, Straphangers claims that the fare hike is just a ploy by unionized transit workers to bilk us out of our money, and so we should fight for our "fair share" of taxes paid by upstate New Yorkers to finance NYC transit. There are so many flaws there, I don't even want to get started.

Indeed. There's plenty of silliness to go around when it comes to mass transportation, though I think the silly quotient is lower when it comes to subways. New subway companies can't enter the market in the same way new bus companies can (or could, if city government didn't protect the MTA monopoly), so the argument for market competition doesn't work quite as well. But as Amy suggests, there is still something irksome about unions and NYC commuters fighting over money extracted from people who have nothing to do with the subway whatsoever.

By the way, "straphanger" is pronounced "strap hanger," and not "straffanger" as I thought the first time I saw that word in print.

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Why Do the Special Kids Get All the Best Presents?

According to this op-ed, the Republicans are dusting off an old proposal to give school vouchers to special-ed students. I'm supportive, of course, though I'm bothered by the federal nature of the plan (the federal government having no constitutional authority in the area of education whatsoever). But I figure this is something that's probably already federalized, so adopting a more market-like approach probably won't hurt anything. Still, something strikes me as a little bizarre about applying voucher logic only in the case of the mentally challenged, as though run-of-the-mill (and gifted) students don't really need a better education system. If this proposal goes through, educational choice will effectively be available only to the rich and the retarded.

That's hyperbole, of course, since many middle class families manage to cough up the money for private school even while paying taxes into the public system. My point, though, is that educational choice is not affordable without vouchers to a substantial fraction of American families. Vouchers for special education students would be great, but they would do nothing for the vast majority of families with typical children.

Interestingly, as the op-ed observes, in the status quo special-ed students already have the ability to attend private schools with public funds when the public schools' special ed programs aren't up to snuff. If the public schools can't provide them with what they need, the justification goes, then let them go to the private sector. My question for those who support such private-school transfers for special-ed students is this: why not apply that justification to all students, including the poor and the middle class? If they (or their parents) feel the public schools don't provide them with what they need, let them go elsewhere. It's evident that many public schools are not just failing in special education - they are failing across the board. In this regard, special ed students aren't so special.

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Why the Bush Administration is Focusing on Saddam Instead of Al Qaeda

I think this old parable -- one of my favorites for describing the effect of mathematics on the economics profession -- is a pretty good description of current foreign policy as well.

A man is crawling around on his hands and knees under a streetlamp, apparently looking for something. A second man comes walking by, stops, and asks the first man what he's doing.

"I'm looking for my keys," he replies.

"Where did you lose them?" asks the second man.

"In those bushes over there," replies the first.

"So why aren't you looking over there?" asks the second man.

"Because the light is so much better over here!"

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Another One Rides the Bus

I heard on the radio this morning that the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union is suing the MTA to get them to increase the size of their bus fleet. They complain that there are not enough buses to accommodate all the passengers waiting to ride them. As you can find out by following the link above, the Bus Riders Union was formed in 1994 to lobby for improvements in bus service in the L.A. metro area.

I can hardly think of a better illustration of the folly of organizing the production of goods and services through bureaucracy instead of markets. There's something truly bizarre about consumers having to launch lawsuits and lobby lawmakers to force businesses to sell them more of their product. Do we need a Fast Food Eaters Union to make McDonald's and Wendy's open more stores? If bus lines were operated by the market, rising demand would result in a temporary rise in price, which would increase profits, induce higher production, and eventually attract new competitors. Eventually, the new competitors would drive the price back down.

I'm simplifying, of course, because there are idiosyncrasies created by the state provision of roads, curbs, and sidewalks. Allowing "jitney" bus service could result in the destruction of regular bus service, because the jitneys could swoop in on the established bus stops and scoop up the passengers just ahead of the regular schedule. That would reduce the financial returns to having established stops and schedules, possibly leading to their disappearance. But these factors do not rule out market solutions, as Daniel Klein, Adrian Moore, and Binyam Reja have argued persuasively in their book on "curb rights." The use of specialized property rights in curbs (bus stops and the like) could allow for the emergence of a market in mass transportation without the bureaucratic nonsense.

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Knock Knock. Who's there? Osama. Osama who?

Why do I oppose invading Iraq? Here's why. The article's conclusion puts it in a nutshell:

One thing should not be forgotten: prior to September 11, much of the national security focus of the Bush administration was on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to so-called rogue states (now the axis of evil) and the missile defense thought to be needed to combat that potential threat. America was blindsided by the al Qaeda terrorist threat. If we focus once again on potential threats that have nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and ignore the real threat at our doorstep, we do so at our peril.

Now for the Pop Quiz.

1. Which of the following persons is most likely responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center?
(a) Saddam Hussein
(b) Osama bin Laden
(c) Kermit the Frog

2. Which of the following persons has been connected to the bombing of a Bali nightclub frequented by American tourists?
(a) Saddam Hussein
(b) Osama bin Laden
(c) Alfred E. Neumann

3. An audiotape released last week says that the United States should be expecting terrorist attacks in the very near future. Whose voice is allegedly on this tape?
(a) Saddam Hussein
(b) Osama bin Laden
(c) Mr. Magoo

I should think the choice of targets would be obvious. And lest I be accused of assuming mutual exclusivity where it doesn't exist, remember that defense resources are limited. Tax dollars are scarce. The time and attention of the administration are scarce. We can't afford to fight every battle at once, so we have to set priorities. So… before we pick a fight with Saddam, shouldn't we deal with the guy who already picked a fight with us?

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From the Role Reversal Department

According to this L. A. Times article, the Justice Department is investigating possible antitrust violations by the nation's two largest alternative newspaper chains, which allegedly agreed to sell each other their competing divisions in Cleveland and Los Angeles in order to reduce competition. The case is ironic in a couple of different ways, as author Tim Rutten observes:

If federal prosecutors find sufficient evidence to pursue a case, it would be a novel moment on at least two counts: One would be the spectacle of the nation's leading alternative weeklies, with their roots in the insurgent journalism of the 1960s counterculture, being treated like a 19th century cartel. The other would be the very strait-laced John Ashcroft's Justice Department entering the legal lists to uphold the commercial rights of massage parlor operators, escort services and phone sex operators, which provide the bulk of the chains' classified advertising.

The case is, unfortunately, consistent with current antitrust doctrine as exemplified in the recent Microsoft case. In that case, the defendant could be characterized as a monopolist only by adopting a very narrow interpretation of the market in question: MS was said to have a monopoly on *proprietary* operating systems for the *PC* platform, thus ignoring the software company's two main competitors: non-proprietary operating systems like Linux and the proprietary operating system used on Apple computers. The case against New Times Media and Village Voice Media relies on a similarly narrow definition of the market in question: the companies are being treated as competitors in the market for *alternative newspapers*, thus ignoring the vast amount of competition both papers face in form of mainstream print and broadcast media, not to mention the Internet.

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Titillating Supreme Court Action

Okay, somebody out there must have read the same article I did about the Victoria's Secret case. I read it within the last couple of days, on Salon.com I thought, but now I can't seem to find it anywhere on the web. It had to be the funniest description of arguments before the Supreme Court I ever read. The author cleverly categorized every argument made by the attorneys and justices in lingerie terms -- e.g., the "Miracle Bra" argument, the "lift and separate" argument, the "secure underwire" argument, etc. And the names actually fit the points they represented, though I can no longer remember well enough to give an example. If anyone knows where I can find this article, please send me the URL so I can post it here!

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Smoking on the Silver Screen

I heard on the radio yesterday that the UN's World Health Organization is pushing for the MPAA to give R ratings to all movies that show people smoking. The MPAA has been resistant to WHO's pressure so far, and I hope they continue to stand firm. Giving R ratings would reduce or eliminate whatever usefulness the ratings system has. For all its faults, the ratings system has this virtue: it attempts, in a rough and ready fashion, to reflect the values shared by most people, and specifically parents, in this country. Most parents would rather not have their children see graphic depictions of sex and violence, and an R rating currently provides a reasonable indicator of whether a movie has either of those things. The fact that parents are somewhat more permissive about these things now than they've been in the past is reflected -- I think rightly -- in the loosening of standards for receiving an R ratings. Some movies that would have gotten an R in 1970 would probably get a PG or PG-13 now.

If the MPAA started giving R ratings to movies just because they show people smoking, it would mark a shift from trying to *reflect* values to trying to *shape* them. As a result, parents will find an even greater discrepancy between their own standards and the standards embodied in movie ratings. If parents see an R rating in the status quo, they can reasonably infer that the movie contains graphic sex or violence, from which the average parent wishes to protect her child. Under the WHO's proposed change, an R movie *might* contain sex or violence -- or it might just show a person lighting up while having a civil conversation.

And then there's the fact that the rating system is used to prevent young people from seeing certain movies. Under the proposed system, a 16 year old would be unable to see a movie that depicts smoking without parental accompaniment, even though he can see people smoking cigarettes on the street any day of the week. That's onerous for both the teen and his parents. If the ratings system has any value at all, it's reducing the burden of parenting by providing useful information and restricting viewing only of the movies that typical parents would object to their children seeing. Giving an R for smoking doesn't fit the bill.

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Kick 'Em to the Curb

I really enjoyed this Non Sequitur comic that appeared in the paper late last week, but I can't figure out how to post it here without scanning it -- and I'm far too lazy for that. So I'll just describe it instead. Danae (a cynical little girl who appears in the strip occasionally) has started an online advice column. The following conversation ensues.

"Welcome to DEAR-DANAE.COM, your online home for sage advice. What's your problem?"

"Dear Danae -- I always seem to be attracted to the worst possible guys... How can I break this stupid cycle of bad decisions?"

"Stop voting."

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Life-Saving Strategies

On Friday I attended Eugene's Xth Annual Dress-as-a-Movie party. I wore a parchment-colored shirt on which I'd written (in puffy black fabric paint) a whole bunch of Jewish names. You guessed it - I was Schindler's List. And the names I wrote were actual names of people saved by Oskar Schindler.

The shirt provoked a couple of interesting conversations about whether Schindler had actually saved anyone *on net*. Or was there instead a substitution effect, meaning that saving one person merely resulted in a different person going to the concentration camps in his place? If so, then Schindler only affected the names, not the numbers.

After some consideration, I concluded that Schindler probably did save people on net, although perhaps fewer than the total number of Jews he had working in his factories. I'm not a WWII scholar, but it's my understanding that Hitler's "final solution" didn't really kick into overdrive until his imminent defeat was clear - sometime in late '43 or early '44. They were killing Jews (and others) in the concentration camps before then, but the killing machine wasn't really working at full capacity. Only in the very late stages of the war was the machine working at full speed. Schindler's plan effectively moved some Jews from the below-capacity period, when they could easily have been killed, to the full-capacity period, when they just added to the length of the queue - a queue that had not been exhausted by the war's end.

Another argument for why Schindler's plan actually saved people on net is that he presumably picked the most able and healthy people to work in his factory. Even if there were a one-for-one substitution effect, the substitution would have put relatively more unhealthy people - i.e., people more likely to have died in the meantime - in the concentration camps. In other words, having a healthy person work in the factory and an unhealthy person die leads to a higher expected number of life-years lived than the reverse. On the other hand, maybe healthy individuals would have lasted longer in the camps.

It should probably go without saying that I think Schindler's actions were still laudable and courageous. That's clearly the case if we judge by mere intentions. But I also suspect that his actions at least created a positive *expected* effect on the number of lives spared. Regardless of what happened ex post, his strategy made sense ex ante.

One person at the party told me a story - of Jewish origin, incidentally - about a man whom the king had condemned to death. The condemned man promised the king that, if he were spared, he would teach the king's horse to sing. The king agreed. Once they were in private, the condemned man's wife asked, "What are you thinking? You can't teach a horse to sing, and you'll just be executed a year from now!" The man replied, "A lot of things can happen in a year. I might die, the king might die, the horse might die!" That, I think, was the simple essence of Schindler's plan.

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