On the front page of today's L.A. Times, the lead headline was "3 Americans Die in Bomb Attack in Gaza." Next to it was a large picture of a woman crying. I assumed she must be a relative of one of the dead, until I saw...
... she was wearing a "Cubs" cap.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Tragedies
Lawyer Humor
Here's a nice legal-linguistic one-liner, via my brother:
Did you hear the one about the jurisprudence fetishist who got off on a technicality?
The Schmo Must Go On
In the context of popular culture, I’ve heard post-modernism defined (or characterized) as the quality of being relentlessly self-referential. If that’s so, then I can think of no better example of post-modern television than “Joe Schmo,” Spike TV’s reality-show spoof.
The premise, in case you haven’t heard, is that a regular guy named Matt Gould has been led to believe that he is participating in a reality show called “Lap of Luxury,” in which nine contestants living in a luxurious house vote each out one-by-one, “Survivor”-style, to win a prize of $100,000. But in reality (heh), all the other contestants are actually actors; Matt is the only person on the set who isn’t in on the joke.
Here’s the key question: Is this reality TV or not? On the one hand, the whole point is that it’s a scam, not reality: everyone’s an actor, everything’s been planned, just one guy is the patsy. But the patsy’s actions can’t be scripted, and his presence creates an unavoidable element of unpredictability. For Matt, this clearly is a reality show, and that will continue to be true even once the truth is revealed. Moreover, while the other “participants” have scripts to follow, they also have to ad-lib and roll with the punches in response to Matt’s choices. They are constantly on the spot, responding to the unexpected, sometimes trying to cover up their own laughter. In one physical challenge, some actor/participants were unable to complete the challenge as required to assure that the planned person “won” immunity in the next vote. The other actor/participants had to alter their behavior (such as by faking errors) to keep the scheduled plot on track.
And here’s where things get truly self-referential. This is a reality show about a reality show. We are not just observing Matt’s trials and witnessing Matt’s commentaries; we also get to hear the commentaries of the actors, producers, and crew about the difficulty of maintaining the charade. In some segments, we see split-screens, one showing Matt’s activities “on camera,” two others showing actor/participants laughing into their fists, and another showing the crew members in the control room watching those very events on camera. We see them gasp and bite their nails when it looks like Matt might catch on to the scam. This is not just reality TV -- it is reality TV caught in a hall of mirrors. M. C. Escher might have been impressed.
Consider this. The show is intended to ridicule the extremes of other reality shows, yet the extreme moments are engaging for precisely the same reasons as those they lampoon. The contestants participate in a series of (rigged) contests, and each one is a ludicrous over-the-top version of similar contests in other programs. On “Survivor” and “Fear Factor,” contestants are asked to eat an endless variety of revolting plants and animals. On “Joe Schmo,” Matt is asked to eat… a steaming dog turd. In another contest, contestants jump into a swimming pool to create splashes large enough to wet down the T-shirts of models, thereby revealing the messages (and blurred-out nipples) underneath. A contest like this is, ostensibly, a spoof of the voyeurism of other reality shows (e.g., strip trivia contests on “Dog Eat Dog”). And sure, there is commentary here, but there’s also bare skin. It’s no mistake that “Schmo” is broadcast on Spike TV, “the first network for men.”
After this much discussion, you might get the impression I think “Schmo” is good television. Well, it’s not. But in a way, that’s the whole point. “Schmo” succeeds by taking what is bad in other reality programs and making it worse. If you find the show’s silliness or vulgarity enjoyable on its own, great; if you don’t, the producers can claim they are mocking the silliness and vulgarity of reality TV. And in so doing, they also mock themselves.
Yep, I’ll be tuning in next week for the season finale.
Friday, October 10, 2003
SAT Scores: The Mystery Continues
(See previous posts here and here.)
Dad tells me that one of his colleagues (who is about his age) distinctly remembers having gotten SAT scores that did not end in zero. This raises again the possibility that, at some point in its history, the scoring of the SAT changed; prior to that time, it was possible to get a score that was not a multiple of ten. But I still have not found any confirmation of this hypothesis. I sent an email to College Board (administrator of the SAT) asking whether there had ever been a scoring change of this nature, but they haven’t gotten back to me. Until further notice, I withdraw the claim that people who remember getting SAT scores not ending in zero are either lying or forgetful. If anyone out there knows the truth on this matter, or has further evidence, please let me know!
UPDATE: Mystery solved! Check the comments section for the story, which Andrew managed to find on the College Board site even though I couldn't.
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Recall Debrief
“May you live in interesting times,” the old saying goes, and indeed we do. I can’t say my vote today [by the time this post goes up, yesterday] was decisive – it never is – but I can at least say it was the most entertaining vote I ever cast.
Just a couple of quick observations in re the recall vote. First, on the news the newscasters were comparing the percentage of voters who said “no” on the recall vote to the percentage who voted “Schwarzenegger” on the replacement vote, in order to see whether Arnold had “received a mandate.” If you understand the recall process, this is clearly nonsense because the numbers could overlap. It’s entirely possible that some people voted to keep Davis and to make Arnold his replacement if Davis were kicked out. It would therefore be incorrect to conclude that all of the 51% [most recent number I’ve seen] who pushed the “Arnold” button actually favored Arnold over Davis.
Second, MSNBC’s use of the exit polls is a tad misleading. In order to make it sound like even liberals and Democrats preferred Arnold, they observe that “More than two-thirds described themselves as moderate or liberal, but they still passed over the moderate Democratic lieutenant governor.” And later, they state that “even though 69 percent of voters described themselves as moderate or liberal, the voters of California told two quintessential moderate-liberal Democrats — Davis and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante — to take a hike.” But hold on a minute – how many of that “more than two-thirds” were moderates, and how many were liberals? Moderates, after all, can be lumped with either conservatives or liberals, depending on how you want to spin the data. On CNN.com, you can find the full break-down: 32% of the voters called themselves “very liberal” or “somewhat liberal,” 37% called themselves “moderate,” and the remaining 31% called themselves “very conservative” or “somewhat conservative.” So MSNBC could just as easily have noted that more than two-thirds of the voters described themselves as moderate or conservative. (It is true, however, that liberals were less inclined to oppose the recall than conservatives were to favor it: 74% of liberals voted no, while 89% of conservatives voted yes. Also, 57% of moderates voted yes.)
Sunday, October 05, 2003
The Glass Half Full
Tyler Cowen praises a book by Alan MacFarlane and Gerry Martin, which documents the importance of glass in the development of human science and technology. I have little doubt that glass is as supremely important as the authors suggest. But, not having read the book, I wonder whether the authors pay sufficient attention to the question of alternative history: what other discoveries might have been made in the absence of glass?
It’s common for people to make grand statements about the role of railroads in the growth of the American economy – that they drastically lowered the cost of transporting agricultural and industrial goods, that they made possible the settling of the American West, that they transformed managerial techniques, and so on. Much of this is true. But as economic historian Robert Fogel observed, the American economy without railroads would not have sat still, or just continued in its old tracks. Fogel figured that, without railroads, people would have built many more canals (and made more use of wagons as well). He used topographical maps to surmised where canals would have been built in an America without railroads. He eventually concluded that the American economy would have done almost as well with railroads as without them.
Other economists have disputed Fogel’s analysis, and there is much to dispute. But his basic analytical framework is clearly correct: you have to ask how people would have applied their motivation and ingenuity in a world without the technology in question. Maybe the would have come up with new technologies, or extended the use of old ones. Again, I haven’t read MacFarlane and Martin’s book. Tyler says the authors are “properly subtle and qualify their thesis in the required ways.” Maybe this is what he means.
Friday, October 03, 2003
Don't Call of Cthulhu
The Don’t Call debate has reared its ugly head once again. The latest manifestation is a brouhaha about freedom of speech (rather than regulation of commerce). The argument here is better, I think, and that’s probably why a couple of federal judges have bought it. The essence of the challenge is that the DNC list improperly discriminates against commercial speech. As Jacob Sullum notes, the DNC list prevents the purveyors of most products and services from calling those who ask not to be called, but leaves a gaping loophole for equally annoying calls from charitable solicitors, political groups, and pollsters.
I find the free-speech argument intriguing but ultimately unpersuasive. The libertarian understanding of free speech rights is that they are just another species of property right. No one has a right to give a speech on your front lawn if you don’t want to listen; no one has a right to publish an op-ed in your newsletter if you don’t want to publish it. But oddly, Sullum (a libertarian) musters a straight-up free speech argument: “Once you think of telemarketing as a form of speech that people are free to accept or reject—in contrast with, say, an assault or a burglary—you have to wonder whether the government has any business trying to stop it in the first place.” But why should we think of it that way? If telemarketing is unlike assault and burglary, it is very much like trespassing or breaking and entering. If I’ve told you in advance that I don’t want you on my property, and you do it anyway, that’s a violation of my property rights. The same goes for making my phone ring if I’ve told you not to call me. (And that’s true even if I have decided to allow other people to call me, just as I can allow some people into my dining room while barring others.)
The better speech-based argument against the DNC list is that it unfairly discriminates between commercial and non-commercial speech. Most libertarians (myself included) think the commercial speech doctrine – which gives commercial communication second-class First Amendment status – is wrong-headed. But if you take the libertarian speech-rights-as-property-rights position, then it’s apparent that the DNC list would be perfectly fine if you could prevent both commercial and non-commercial soliciting. In either case, the government would just be helping you to enforce your property rights. By leaving a loophole for non-commercial speech, the government essentially said, “We’ll help you protect yourself against undesired commercial intrusions into your home, but you’ll have to defend yourself against undesired non-commercial intrusions.”
Why should the government make that distinction? Well, it shouldn’t. But I’d rather have some protection than no protection at all. When commercial telemarketers claim their free speech rights are being violated, they are effectively saying, “Hey, other people get to trespass – we should be able to trespass, too!” That argument doesn’t fly, because they had no fundamental right to trespass in the first place.
P.S. Apologies to H. P. Lovecraft fans for not weaving Cthulhu references throughout the post.
SAT Scores, cont.
In case you missed it: my Dad posted a reply to my post about the SAT in the comments box. In his words, "Since its inception, SAT scores have always been multiples of 10. Therefore, anybody who says that he made something like 1206 or 1355 is either lying or has a faulty memory." People in the lying-or-forgetful category include GWB, Al Gore, Ben Stein, and Bill Bradley. Since my Dad is in the same generation as GWB and Al Gore, I'm trusting his accuracy on the matter of whether it was possible at the time to get a non-multiple-of-10 score.
In a related matter, Dad notes that SAT scoring did change in 1995, but not in a way that affected the multiples-of-10 issue. The "recentering" of 1995 was designed to "correct" for the gradual decline in SAT scores that began in the 1960s. The result is that pre-1995 and post-1995 scores are not strictly comparable; the post-1995 scores are (at least for the upper end of the range) higher. For more details, read Dad's comment.
One last complaint. Am I the only one who's tired of people referring to the "SATs," plural? My understanding is that the SAT is conceived as one test with multiple parts, not multiple tests.
Thursday, October 02, 2003
Blind Man's Bluff
If you dig casual game theory, read Andrew Chamberlain’s game theoretic analysis of opening and closing your window blinds. I couldn’t help but add another layer of complexity in a couple of messages in his comments box. One additional comment: wonder why Andrew didn’t identify his dilemma as an example of the classic game of “Chicken"? (Thanks to Julian for the pointer.)
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
And Yet More Rational Curmudgeonry
Here is yet another theory about why people tend to become resistant to change as they age (go here for my first theory, and here for Jim’s). This one relies on the desire of rational people to conserve their limited mental space and time. If one has only a finite amount of mental resources to spend in thinking about stuff, it’s rational to allocate less time to those subjects on which new information or discussion is unlikely to generate change.
Consider, for example, my attitude about communism. I have been told once or twice that I am “closed-minded” about communism (and certain other subjects) because I’m resistant to having debates on the matter -- I reject the viability of communism out of hand. But when I was a freshman in college, I had many long discussions with communists and their leftist allies. I considered communism, and rejected it. I considered it again, and rejected it. I considered it a dozen more times, and rejected it. After a sufficient number of iterations, I began to doubt I would hear any argument that I hadn’t already found wanting. It’s difficult to imagine, at this point in my life, that any new debate on communism will bring me any great new insights. While I admit there’s some non-zero probability of a new argument or piece of evidence that changes my mind, the probability is small, and thus the expected return from my mental investment is tiny relative to the expected return from a debate on (say) intellectual property, a subject on which I remain ambivalent. I have only so much time and mental energy to expend thinking about such questions; why would I waste time on one where the effort expended is unlikely to make a difference? If that makes me closed-minded, then I contend that I am rationally closed-minded.
If other people are like me in this regard, then people will tend to become more set in their views as time passes. For most of us, there are diminishing returns to added investment in any given subject area. (An exception is the academic whose initial investments in thinking and learning about a particular subject allow him to create a “gravy train” of publications with extensions and applications of his ideas.) If we’re talking about politics and economics, the effect should be especially pronounced among people who (unlike me) find such topics incredibly boring. When the psychic benefits of thinking about something are small, the mind rationally closes on that subject after a smaller amount of mental effort, thereby leaving more time for thinking about sports, women, beer, and so on.
More Rational Curmudgeonry
As Glen mentions below, it does seem that people become less flexible as they get older. One reason might be Bayesian updating. An alternate reason is that often skills are specific to a certain task or way of doing things, and each new skill is costly to acquire. Most people have made a substantial investment learning to do things one way. If a better way comes along, it may be optimal to stick with the old not-quite-as-good way and not pay the cost of learning something new. A young person faces the same cost (learning to do it) either way, and so might as well pick the new way.
Magnifying this effect is that the benefits of learning something new are lower the older you get. There is less time to get a payoff from new knowledge. Why learn the latest computer software for your job when retirement is three years away?
This is one reason that intellectual revolutions are often led by the young. Older scholars have skills invested in the established paradigm which gives them an advantage as long as that paradigm is dominant. They understand it better and are better at applying it. Furthermore, they would have to learn a new way of thinking about things, and why learn the latest theory when retirement is three years away?
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Department of Duh
Turns out that aging really does cause cancer. Just in case you hadn't guessed that already. Apparently it has something to do with an increase in genetic instability that occurs as one approaches middle age.
Monday, September 29, 2003
SAT Scores
This Time.com feature shows the self-reported test scores of several famous people. Now, my SAT score was a multiple of 10, and so was everybody else's SAT score I can remember seeing or hearing. But several of the celebrities in the feature, including both George W. Bush and Al Gore, report numbers that are not multiples of ten (1206 and 1355 for George and Al, respectively). Any idea what's going on here? Is it just a coincidence that I've only seen scores that are multiples of 10? Did they change the scoring system at some point in time, so that people who took the test before a certain date could get scores that were not multiples of 10? Or should we conclude that these folks have faulty memories?
BTW, make sure you check out J.Lo's score. Very funny.
The Rational Curmudgeon
Why do people become more set in their ways (or more conservative, in the non-political sense of the term) as they get older? I think the popular explanation is the “rusty brain” theory: people’s minds just start to get crusty and hard to move as time passes, like rusty machines in need of oil. They resist change because friction in the gears impedes free thinking and hence the acceptance of new ideas. Perceived this way, resistance to change is a form of irrationality that derives from inefficient mental processes.
Naturally, I have an alternative theory. Resistance to change is the outcome of rational information processing. Think of people as Bayesian updaters: they have prior beliefs about the world -- essentially probability estimates -- which they update on the basis of a stream of new information they receive from their environment. They engage in hypothesis testing, and whether any given hypothesis is accepted or rejected depends on the data set. A young person has a small data set, because he has had few experiences and less time to observe the world. Consequently, the marginal impact of any new observation is larger. An older person, on the other hand, has a large data set, and therefore the marginal impact of one additional data point is likely very small. (If I’ve only had nine experiences of a particular kind so far, one new event constitutes 10% of my experiences of that kind, and the effect on my beliefs could be quite dramatic. If I’ve had 99 experiences of a particular kind, one new event constitutes a mere 1% of my experiences of that kind, so radical shifts are unlikely.) It follows that rational people will tend to become more obstinate in their beliefs over time.
Of course, I’m leaving out many potential sources of irrationality here. For example, it is entirely possible -- likely, even -- that one’s current beliefs shape both the collection and interpretation of new observations. The result is a path-dependent process in which new observations systematically tend to reinforce the conclusions that resulted from old observations. I’m not saying this doesn’t occur; I’m merely pointing out that irrationality is not necessary to explain the resistance of the older people to change.
I have another, complementary theory of the same phenomenon, but I’ll wait until later to post it. Jim also has a theory that he described at lunch today -- something about human capital -- so maybe this post will prod him to post his ideas as well. (When I invited Mike and Jim to join the blog, we agreed not to put each other on the spot like this, but this time Jim gave me permission to do so.)
Friday, September 26, 2003
False Political Advertising
I saw an advertisement last night, funded (I believe) by Gray Davis’s anti-recall campaign. The primary message of the ad was that the recall would hurt California’s economy, cost too much money, and so on -- and that, therefore, voters should vote against recalling Davis. The ad showed lots of newspaper clippings with headlines about the recall’s terrible toll on the state of California.
The ad’s reasoning is disingenuous, of course. Although I don’t have those newspaper clippings in front of me, I’m willing to bet they related to the economic costs of having the recall election at all, not the costs of removing Davis from office. And since the recall election is happening whether you like it or not, those costs are sunk. We will suffer them regardless, and therefore they are utterly irrelevant to the question of how one should vote in the recall election.
Thursday, September 25, 2003
Conservatives Guilty of Being Good Debaters?
Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber observes that conservative arguments against [fill in the blank here] very often fall into three categories, to wit:
Bertram also observes that conservatives take these positions and “advance[e] them simultaneously or switch[] promiscuously among them.”It isn’t true.orIt may be true, but it doesn’t matter.orIt’s true, and it matters, but doing something about it would (a) have the perverse effect of making that thing worse, or (b) make something else worse. etc etc.
In other words, Bertram convicts conservatives of being good debaters. In my old high school debating days, we were taught that it was wise to attack all aspects of an opponents’ case if possible, casting doubt on both the significance of a problem and the viability of the solution proposed. And there’s nothing contradictory about doing so, as long as you’re sufficiently careful about how you present the arguments. You can consistently argue that phenomenon X is not widespread, that even if widespread it should not be regarded as a problem, and that even if it’s a widespread problem the policy in question would either increase its incidence or create offsetting disadvantages. (The “even if” form of argument, in my experience, was among the most powerful approaches in winning debates, because it emphasized that the listener could disagree on one or more points and still agree with you on the central proposition.) Also, it’s worth noting that all three forms of argument can be used to advance changes in policy as well as defend the status quo. They are deployed by people of all ideological stripes.
Take the case of drug legalization. The legalizer can, and I would argue should, advance all of these propositions: (a) that the harms of drugs have been grossly exaggerated by the prohibitionists, (b) that those harms of drugs that are self-regarding ought not be the subject of social control, (c.i) that prohibition exacerbates many of the problems associated with drug use, such as drug poisoning and overdoses, and (c.ii) that prohibition empowers a violent criminal class that creates real threats to the non-drug-using population. Far from being contradictory, these positions bolster each other.
Conservatives do, of course, offer many fallacious forms of argument; argumentum ad naturam (the appeal to nature) leaps to mind. Liberals do, too; ad misericordiam (the appeal to pity) is pretty common. Interestingly, Bertram’s position verges on the latter: he implies that conservatives deploy the sound argumentative strategies above as a means of dismissing “the plight of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our societies.” Aren’t there enough fallacious arguments out there to condemn, without also condemning arguments that are perfectly reasonable?
No Longer No Comment
BlogSpeak seemed like a pretty good comments service, but then it turned out that it prevented Netscape 4.0 from reading the blog page. I don't know how many people use Netscape 4.0, but I'm thinking it must be a lot, because my hits-per-day dropped almost to zero for a couple of days at least. Maybe it was just a problem with the counter, since I've been using BlogSpeak for over a week. But rather than play detective, I just decided to find a new comments service, HaloScan. The template is pretty stripped down, but at least I'll have comments again. Again, my apologies to anyone who thought my comments area would be an excellent place to save their literary endeavors.
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Comments Down
Comments will be down until further notice. For some reason, Netscape can't access this page because of some kind of error in the comments script.
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Innumeracy in the Recall Election
A recent Schwarzenegger campaign commercial charges that Gray Davis “Increased Car Tax 300%.” The L.A. Times’s “Ad Watch,” which evaluates the validity of statements made in campaign ads, deemed the figure (if not the blame) accurate: “The car tax was in fact tripled, though Davis maintains the increase was required by a law passed under former Gov. Pete Wilson…” But if the tax was indeed tripled, then Schwarzenegger’s figure is flat wrong: a tripling of the tax constitutes a 200% increase, not a 300% increase.
In Defense of Gouging
C. C. Kraemer defends the practice of “price gouging” during times of crisis (like hurricane Isabel), and he gets it exactly right, so I’m rather surprised by Tyler Cowen’s more skeptical take. Kraemer’s basic point is that higher prices induce suppliers to bring more of the scarce good – generators, batteries, flashlights, etc. – to market. Tyler responds by pointing out that, in the short run, the supply is fixed – but then he immediately offers the obvious counterpoint, which is that “in the long run the economy will stand readier with emergency flashlights.” Exactly so, and this seems to me a decisive argument. In order to stock generators and such, shop owners have to take up valuable shelf space that could have been used for other items. The added profit they can reap during times of crisis is the financial reward that compensates them for making sacrifices during ordinary periods. A policy that clamps down on “gouging” during a crisis makes it less likely that necessary items will be available during the next crisis. Also, as Kraemer notes, the higher prices attract suppliers in non-crisis regions to transport their goods to the region where they’re needed most.
There is another economic argument in defense of raising prices during a crisis. Even if the higher price does not attract greater supply to the market, a higher price for the fixed quantity assures that the goods are allocated to their highest-valued uses. When the price is kept low, the first consumer to walk in the door is more inclined to buy a large quantity when a small quantity would do. Perhaps he’ll buy bottled water not just for drinking during the hurricane, but for watering his indoor plants. As a result, the next consumer finds himself unable to buy water for drinking, even though he’s willing to pay much more than the fixed price.
One more defense of price hikes during crises is that it encourages people to think ahead. If you live in a hurricane-prone region, it makes sense to have a stock of fresh water and batteries on hand instead of rushing to the store and fighting the crowds at the last minute. When I lived in Washington, D.C., I made a point of buying umbrellas when it was not raining. To the extent that people think ahead like this, the magnitude of price hikes during crises is dampened because the demand is lower.
So why does Tyler oppose such a policy on “libertarian freedom grounds” alone, when strong economic grounds exist as well? His point seems to be that gouging creates resentment, and “not wanting to be gouged is a preference too.” Of course, the desire not to be gouged may be no different from the standard desire to pay a lower price, in which case the argument carries no weight. But the resentment may also play the added role of punishing gougers by depriving them of future sales (of the same goods and other goods they sell) in non-crisis periods. This, Tyler suggests, is a desirable norm because it keeps the gouging in check: “our current norms help keep our suppliers in line and limit their ability to defraud us.” While there is truth to this point, it does not follow that a law is needed to reinforce the norm. The resentment does the job on its own, by forcing suppliers to take into account the lost trust and good will resulting from steep price hikes, while not putting them in the legal straightjacket of never raising prices during a crisis.
It is true, as Tyler says, that we can critically evaluate whether stronger or weaker fairness norms would be desirable. The more competitive are the markets in question, the less important such fairness norms should be. Why? Because when there is competition among suppliers of emergency provisions, a supplier who raises his price more than is necessary to compensate for stocking costs will lose out to other suppliers – either immediately or during the next crisis. In more monopolistic situations, by which I mean situations where both actual and potential competition is weak, a stronger norm might be necessary. (This may be the point of the Mankiw/Akerlof paper Tyler cites, which I can’t seem to access.) But the broader point is that, given the strong economic defenses of price hikes during crises, it seems wiser to rely on flexible private norms over inflexible anti-gouging laws.
Monday, September 22, 2003
What Consistency Consists Of
A few months ago, Julian and Will both observed that Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous quotation, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds,” has been the victim of a gross misinterpretation. Emerson was not defending the holding of contradictory views at the same time; rather, he was defending the virtue of being willing to change one’s mind, rather than forcing one’s present views to be consistent with what one said in the past. As Julian notes, self-contradiction is hardly a virtue: “The notion that there's something wrong with consistency within one's own views at a given time—the idea, in other words, that you should just arbitrarily apply a principle in some cases but not in others, is pretty bizarre, and I can't think of anything to recommend it.”
It occurs to me, however, that while consistency-within-time is the greater virtue in philosophical matters, consistency-over-time is often the greater virtue in law and public policy. One of the fundamental principles of the rule of law is that individuals should be able to predict how the law will apply to their specific cases, both in the present and the future. The ability of people to predict the rules gives them a greater capacity to plan their lives, form commitments, make investments, and coordinate their behavior with others. Of course, this doesn’t mean the rules can never change; indeed, it is desirable for people to know that the law will sometimes change in ways that take account of new circumstances. But in general, there is value to having a degree of constancy in the rules to facilitate individual planning.
As my one-time dissertation advisor (and now coauthor) Mario Rizzo has pointed out, there is a difference between logical consistency and praxeological consistency. (He drew this distinction partially from Mises, but I don’t think Mises was especially clear on the subject.) Policies that are praxeologically consistent are those that people can rely on for purposes of choosing their behavior; it can also mean policies that minimize interpersonal conflict and allow people to coordinate their actions. Policies that are logically inconsistent might nonetheless be praxeologically consistent. For instance, the doctrines of tort law might be justified on normative grounds that are foreign to property or contract law. And yet as long as the resulting rules are sufficiently clear and predictable, they can provide the basis for intelligent planning by individuals. Changing one of the rules might make the two branches of law more consistent with each other, but less consistent with what has gone before – possibly botching people’s plans in the process.
Take, for example, the recent trend in tort law toward holding people liable for the self-regarding choices of others – e.g., the possibility of holding McDonald’s liable for the obesity of its customers. Obviously, the underlying principle here is that individuals cannot be held totally responsible for their own actions. Fortunately, this notion has not yet taken firm hold – the McDonald’s suit hasn’t succeeded yet (though it still might, and there are plenty of other examples in tort law of people getting compensated for harms brought on by their own poor judgment). But let’s suppose that it eventually does take hold. We might still be spared a horrendous legal outcome by the fact that contract law has been somewhat more resistant to anti-responsibility norms. A contract like this one pointed out by Amy, in which restaurant customers sign a waiver before consuming a sinful dessert, would still be upheld in court. As a result, the law would be logically inconsistent but praxeologically consistent: customers and restaurants could still make their transactions with a reasonable ability to predict the outcome. But then suppose that contract law were forced to become consistent with tort law. Restaurant owners might suddenly find themselves liable for numerous activities (like serving desserts to waiver-signing customers) that they had thought would be just fine. If they had known how the law would change, perhaps they and their customers would have behaved differently. Worse, the change in the contract law could create a plethora of unintended consequences in other endeavors where waivers are involved: bungee-jumping, medical procedures, and so on. For a time, at least, turmoil would reign.
On the other hand, plenty of policy examples demonstrate the importance of consistency-within-time relative to consistency-over-time. The S&L debacle is a nice example of a case in which it would have been better to adopt any consistent policy (either FSLIC plus extensive investment regulation, or no FSLIC and minimal investment regulation) instead of the inconsistent policy we did choose (which allowed S&L’s to keep over-risky investment portfolios and stick the taxpayer with the tab when their investments turned south). Moral hazard is just one possible result of inconsistent policies existing simultaneously.
My question, then, is whether there is some principle for choosing between consistency-over-time and consistency-within-time. Is there a weighing process? Or should one always outweigh the other whenever they conflict?
Friday, September 19, 2003
Youth Creep
I am often mistaken for younger than my actual age (31), and naturally I’m flattered. But I don’t get a swollen head about it, because I have a theory that most people “look younger than their age.”
How is this possible? Well, presumably people’s assessments of what any given age looks like are based on their previous observations of people who were that age. My idea of “what a 50-year-old looks like” is based on all the 50-year-olds I’ve met. But of course, the people I’ve met who were 50 then are all older than 50 now. This wouldn’t matter if standards of health and nutrition remained the same over time. But in fact, health and nutrition continue to improve year by year, which means that people who are 50 now probably look better than people who were 50 a decade ago looked at that time. The current 50-year-olds have had greater access to new means of preserving youth. Thus, my age assessments are biased downward systematically, unless I make a special effort to take into account improvements in preservation technology.
As evidence for my proposition, I could rely on the fact that it’s so rare to hear about someone overestimating another person’s age. But that phenomenon could result from people’s desire not to hurt each other’s feelings. So to test my hypothesis, we would need to conduct a study in which people were asked to guess ages of people in photographs or on video. The first test would check to see if the difference between age guesses and actual ages is negative and statistically significant. The second test would look to see if older people, whose observations of people stretch back further into the past, are more inclined to underestimate someone’s age than younger people.
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Heap Big Smoke
“Someone is either a smoker or a non-smoker, there's no in-between. The trick is to find out which one you are and be that.”I always liked that line, but I thought the answer was supposed to be philosophical or psychological -- you know, discovering your true preferences and embracing them or something. But it turns out the answer might be genetic. A recent Israeli study purports to show that smokers with low levels of a particular enzyme are 5 to 10 times more likely to get lung cancer than smokers with high levels of the enzyme. If the study’s results are confirmed, you may eventually be able to take a blood test to find out whether you’re a born smoker or not. (But before you smokers get too excited, you should know that even the smokers with high levels of the enzyme were much more likely to get lung cancer than non-smokers. And then there are all those other health conditions, like emphysema.)
- Robin Williams in “Dead Again”
Monday, September 15, 2003
Anecdotes and Antidotes
Radley linked my defense of him versus Al Giordano, saying (among other things) that “empirical evidence is always preferable to anecdotes.” Giordano responds in the comments box, saying (also among other things) that “[Radley] based [his] claim exclusively on polling data (which, after all, is no more or less than the science of collecting anecdotal information from many people at once).”
At this juncture, I think it would be useful to consider the meaning of “anecdotal.” The definition is “Based on casual observations or indications rather than rigorous or scientific analysis.” The very nature of an anecdote is that it is a particular instance observed in an idiosyncratic fashion. When you start collecting a large number of anecdotes in a systematic fashion, they cease to be anecdotes and become a data set.
Now, it’s true (as Giordano emphasizes) that polls and surveys can be very misleading. So perhaps something is wrong with the surveys Radley cites, which indicate that poor people in the developing world actually like globalization. Maybe the wording of the questions was biased. Maybe the sampling method didn’t generate representative samples of the populations. But it seems awfully strange to dismiss the results of such surveys, which at least attempt to be scientific, on the basis of a handful of observations with no consistent sampling method. Even if we accepted Giordano’s strange notion that a poll is nothing more than a collection of anecdotes, does it make sense to reject the clear results of a large sample of anecdotes (38,000, in fact) in favor of the unclear results of a smaller sample of anecdotes generated largely via undocumented collection methods?
Friday, September 12, 2003
Ch-ch-ch-changes
And while I was dealing with the comments problem below, I went ahead and updated the site a bit. As you can see, author names and post-dates now appear below the post titles; this is possible now because Blogger is allowing all users access to the Titles feature (previously available only to BloggerPro subscribers). I also expanded the blogroll and changed the site's subtitle. Finally, I added the little proviso at right, letting anyone who sends us email know that their messages are subject to publication unless they request otherwise.
Out with the SquawkBox, in with the BlogSpeak
So my comments provider, SquawkBox, suddenly decided to charge money for my account. My original terms of service specified a 12-month introductory period during which no payment would be required, and I only signed on last April. But it seems they changed the terms of service about a month ago, with no notice except a single message on a support forum – which I’d never bothered to visit because I hadn’t had any problems. Now they require you to pay for the service if you have a high volume of comments; “high volume” appears to be anything more than a few comments a day.
“Ah well,” I said to myself, “the service is (or was) free, so I guess they can run it how they want.” I thought I might even grit my teeth and actually pay for the service, since I hadn’t had any prior problems. But first, I wanted to (a) make sure there wasn’t any mistake, and (b) find out if I could capture all the old comments, in case I wanted to switch comment services now or in future. Well, SquawkBox doesn’t have a single email address listed on its website; the only way you can ask questions or make complaints is by using one of their forums. And you can’t use their forums unless you’re a current customer in good standing – i.e., all paid up.
In short, I can’t get my comments back unless I cough up the money to keep my account active. Well, to hell with that. I don’t want to pay money to an organization that won’t let me get a parachute out. I’ve decided to shoot the hostage – well, abandon him anyway – by not buying access to all the old comments. (My apologies to any readers who had composed and saved their dissertations in my comments box.) I’m now running my comments via BlogSpeak, which turns out to have a simpler and more flexible system anyway.
Thursday, September 11, 2003
Academic Blogs and Infotainment
Tyler Cowen, in an interesting interview, argues that academic blogs are the wave of the future. Top academics will aim for a few prestigious publications and then present the rest of their ideas through blogs and other channels. I’m a bit skeptical since blog topics seem pretty limited to me. Cases, anecdotes and cute stories work well, which is why law and the cute-story part of economics (e.g. why there is such a big markup in movie popcorn) make up most of the blogs I read.
I think it works less well for other issues, such as those that make up most of economics. To give an example, Tyler Cowen presented his “Macroeconomics in Five Easy Lessons”. In his discussion of Fed policy he says (without any explanation)
“Don't worry about the discount rate, when the Fed lends to banks, that is secondary and I will ignore it.In a response to the “first lesson”, Daniel Davies replies to that sentence by saying,
It isn’t secondary at all, particularly if you’re operating on a standard of “what the stock market cares about”. I explained at length a while ago how the control of the overnight money rate can be used to exercise a significant degree of control of the entire yield curveFor that exchange to be meaningful the reader should be able to answer the following questions: Why is anyone worrying about the discount rate in the first place? Why is Cowan right that you can ignore it? And what two things is Davies confusing?
Here is the answer.
The Federal Reserve can affect the amount of reserves in the economy through purchases of bonds (a process called open market operations) or by lending reserves directly to banks. The part of the Fed that makes loans is called the discount window, and the rate it lends at is the discount rate. In the past, the Fed has worked to control the quantity of reserves and short-term interest rates by regulating the amount borrowed at the discount window, which is why the discount rate was important in the past. It no longer does this. There is still some borrowing at the window, but it is mostly for technical reasons, seasonal loans to banks in agricultural areas, and very-short-term (mostly overnight) loans to banks that have temporary difficulties in meeting their reserve requirement. So, the reason you don’t need to know about the discount rate is that changes in Fed policy have made it irrelevant for bigger questions of monetary policy.My point is not that the discount rate is an important subject (although both people brought it up one way or the other) but rather that it is not entertaining, and this distorts the coverage. Because it is not entertaining, Cowen isn’t going to provide an explanation, and no one but economists with formal training will know what is really being talked about. Which is why I doubt that blogs will develop into an alternate location for serious discussions about most parts of economics. What works well on blogs is just too narrow.
What matters for policy are open market operations. These influence the interest rate charged by banks to other banks on overnight loans, which is called the Fed Funds rate (this is the “overnight money rate” referred to by Davies). As he argues, the overnight rate is important; however, it is a separate thing from the discount rate.
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
The Argument Clinic
Micah Ghertner does a nice job of defending Radley Balko against Al Giordano’s scurrilous attack. Essentially, Giordano plays the “silly libertarians must be ignorant, naive, stupid, or evil to believe what they believe” card. Ghertner correctly identifies this as the ad hominem non-argument that it is.
There is one aspect of Giordano’s post that Ghertner doesn’t give the battering it deserves, however, so allow me to take it on. Giordano repeatedly cites Radley’s lack of personal, hands-on experience as a reason to doubt his positions. On the issue of globalization, Giordano notes that Radley has apparently never “learned any of the languages these mythical ‘poor people’ speak” or “done his own heavy lifting in his research [on globalization].” On the issue of prison rape, Giordana urges Radley to “Spend some real time in jail - as an inmate - and then come back and talk to us about prison rape.”
These arguments (if you can call them that) are individual species of a broader genus known as “if you haven’t been there you just can’t understand.” Other members of this genus include “until you can get pregnant, you don’t get to express an opinion about abortion” and “if you haven’t ever worked for the minimum wage, then how can you advocate eliminating it?” The implied claim behind all these positions is that the only valid knowledge is that which is gained through direct personal experience.
I wonder if those who take positions like these would affirm similar statements about non-favored groups, such as “unless you earn over $100 grand per year, you don’t get to support high marginal tax rates,” or “unless you live in a country that is going to get punished by the Kyoto Protocol, you have no business supporting it”?
I encountered a version of this argument a few weeks ago, when I was discussing globalization (yeah, it’s a popular topic) with an intelligent -- and very left-wing -- couple I met at a book reception. After I’d made several economic arguments in defense of globalization (to which I didn’t think they had responded very well, though some observers may have disagreed), they played their “we’ve traveled in the third world, have you?” card. Well, no, I had to admit -- I don’t make enough money to afford vacations in places I’d like to visit, to say nothing of hellholes. What, I wondered, did they think I would see in such places that would change my mind? The clear implication of their statement was that, upon seeing such terrible privation and squalor, I’d reject capitalism. But first, I don’t support globalization because I think life in Pakistan and Indonesia is hunky-dory; on the contrary, I support globalization because I think life there is pretty horrible. And second, their economies are very far from being capitalist, so it would be pretty weird for me to blame their terrible conditions on an economic system other than the one they have.
I suppose they might respond that the poverty of third-world nations is attributable not to their collectivist and totalitarian domestic economic systems, but to the international capitalist system. Okay, fine -- I think that’s wrong, but let’s suppose it’s true. That only strengthens my point, which is that something other than direct personal experience counts as relevant knowledge. If both of us can look at the same squalid conditions, and you can blame them on capitalism while I can blame them on collectivism, then isn’t it apparent that further study, of both a theoretical and empirical character, is required? Yet that is just the kind of evidence the anti-globo crowd is usually disinclined to consider, unless, of course, it’s just raw data (e.g., “The richest fifth of the world’s people consumes 86% of all goods and services while the poorest fifth consumes just 1.3%”) that really proves nothing on its own. Facts do not speak for themselves; they require interpretation.
Ultimately, the “if you haven’t been there” arguments constitute intellectually suspect appeals to emotion. They invite you to make decisions on complex policy issues on the basis of your gut reactions to images of the sad and pathetic, instead of careful analysis. Worse, the argument is deployed in conversation and debate with the clear purpose of dismissing analysis and discrediting the speaker who offers it.
Return of the Firefly
Good news for Joss Whedon fans: "Firefly," Whedon's underrated TV space western that was canceled last year after less than half a season, will be turned into a feature-length film. Plus, all episodes of the show (including three unaired episodes) will be released on DVD this December.
Man Sends Himself by Airmail
Read the whole ridiculous story here. This guy would have been an excellent candidate for the Darwin Awards, if only he had died (which he easily could have). My favorite part: "The freight cost — billed to McKinley’s employer — was $550. At that rate, 'he could have flown first-class,' Phillips said."
Monday, September 08, 2003
Do Not Swap List
Julian takes the RIAA to task for a rather silly argument they’ve mustered in favor of a file-swapping crackdown: that the software used to swap music files is also used for swapping kiddie porn. Radley suggests that Julian is being inconsistent, because he has defended the constitutionality and libertarian-compatibility of the national Do Not Call list: “Why is the DNC list a legitimate use of federal power via the Commerce Clause, but federal laws against fileswapping aren't?”
Radley misunderstands Julian’s argument on the file-swapping issue. He notes, correctly, that many of the same points Julian mustered in defense of the DNC list apply here: (1) there is some form of theft involved [assuming you buy the notion of intellectual property], (2) the theft is being perpetrated by means of public utilities, (3) it’s occurring across state lines, and (4) state laws are insufficient to deal with the problem. And these points would be sufficient to show that a file-swapping crackdown would be constitutional and [again, if you buy the notion of intellectual property] libertarian-consistent if done correctly. But that’s not what Julian was trying to prove. He was simply drawing attention to a thoroughly unbelievable statistic implying that 42% of downloadable porn images were kiddie porn. It turns out this statistic was found by seeing how many of the files had titles or descriptions with certain words like “underage” in them, which in no way indicates that the images actually involve children.
As a constitutional matter, the federal government clearly has the power to deal with file-swapping in some manner, because Article I Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” The Commerce clause need not even be invoked here. The constitutional basis for file-swapping legislation is even better than that for the DNC list.
With respect to libertarian-ness, there are those libertarians who think the IP rights are illegitimate grants of monopoly power, but Julian and I am not among them. I think that IP rights, while differing from traditional property rights in many respects, share with traditional property rights the same consequentialist justification: they deal with a positive externality problem that would exist in their absence. I therefore regard IP as just an unusual species of property. Julian, I happen to know, thinks IP rights should not be regarded as true property, but are justifiable nonetheless. Both of us are skeptical about the rent-seeking efforts of organizations like the RIAA to strengthen the enforcement of IP rights whatever the cost, to extend copyright periods indefinitely, and so on.
Aside from constitutionality and libertarianism, there is the additional issue of effectiveness. It’s entirely possible that anti-file-swapping legislation would be utterly incapable of dealing with distributed networks like Morpheus and KaZaA, in which case the legislation would be constitutional but pointless. The logistical problems associated with the DNC list are not nearly so difficult -- though I could still be convinced by evidence that, on net, the DNC was practically not such a good idea after all. Point being, good policy must be constitutional, just, and practical.
Econobloggers
Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok started an economics-focused blog called Marginalist Revolution last week, and it's already been the site of several really excellent posts. I particularly recommend Tyler's and Alex's mini-debate on the desirability of school vouchers (see here, here, here, and here). This is must-reading for voucher supporters, because Tyler's challenges are not your typical anti-market dreck, yet Alex's responses aptly weigh the disadvantages of a voucher system against the equivalent disadvantages of the status quo.
Friday, September 05, 2003
Take Away My Free Privileges? How Dare They!
My comments are down because, apparently, SquawkBox has decided to charge me money to continue the account. I don't recall their having notified me of this possibility when I signed up -- otherwise, I might have chosen a different comments manager. Anyway, looks like they'll charge me 14 British pounds, which I'm guessing is between $20 and $25, for a year's worth of service. Anyone know if that's good? Is there another free service out there that won't suddenly demand that I upgrade? Your answers to these questions will, of course, have to be emailed to me since, um, my comments box is down.
The Marriage Pool
Conservatives like Jonah Goldberg subscribe to what I call the “public swimming hole” view of marriage. In their concern about the possibility of gay couples undermining the institution of marriage, they seem to think there is only one great big marriage for everyone, and therefore the behavior of any married couple affects everyone else. People who have promiscuous “open” marriages are basically pissing in the pool and ruining it for everyone.
I, on the other hand, think marriage is a lot more like a private pool in your back yard. If you want to pee in it, fine. If you and Jonah want to fill your pool with so much chlorine it makes your eyes smart, well, that’s okay too.
Critics of my view might point out that, by its very nature as an institution, marriage is necessarily a social phenomenon affected by all individuals who take part. “If people don’t perceive marriage as a desirable state of affairs, fewer people will try it out. If more people believe that marriage need not imply sexual loyalty, then more people will think it’s okay to cheat in their marriages.” But the monolithic character of the institution should not be taken as given. There is not just one model of marriage to which everyone must submit. The fact that some people have “open” marriages hasn’t changed the fact that, for the vast majority of married people, sleeping with other people is considered a serious violation of trust. And every marriage has its own idiosyncratic norms that other couples might find bizarre.
Unfortunately, the current one-size-fits-all legal regime encourages the notion that all people must swim in the same marriage pool. Anyone who gets married -- even once gays are allowed to take part -- faces the same obligations, the same rights and privileges, the same rules for jumping ship and dividing the property (at least within any given state). If conservatives are really concerned about saving their own vision of marriage, they ought to get behind privatizing marriage, thereby reducing the state to the role of contract enforcer. If marriage were privatized, many concepts of marriage could flourish, each with its own set of pool rules.
A Better Joke Candidacy
A few weeks ago, Mike asked why the California LP shouldn't nominate Gary Coleman for governor. The answer (of course) is that the last thing the LP's reputation needs is another joke candidacy a la Howard Stern. Nevertheless, it is interesting how often these political outsiders have libertarian sensibilities, even if they lack philosophical consistency. For the latest example, check out porn actress and gubernatorial candidate Mary Carey's platform. Aside from the tax on breast implants and the porn-for-guns program, it all looks fairly libertarian. And she has just announced four new positions (not that kind of position, you perv) that will have libertarians cheering: "Ms. Carey is against [that's right, against] government-provided universal health coverage [yeah!]. She supports physician-assisted suicide [right on!]. She is pro-choice [of course!]. She supports legalizing ferrets [woo-hoo!]."
Could this election be any more fun?
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Cancerous Statistics
An op-ed in the Sunday L.A. Times (registration required), authored by Drs. Samuel S. Epstein and Quentin D. Young, argues for increasing government spending on cancer research, especially research focused on prevention rather than cures. In order to prove the current approach (which already involves extensive government spending) is inadequate, they note the following:
A recent government analysis of leading causes of mortality in the U.S. from 1973 to 1999 revealed that, although the percentage of the population dying from heart disease decreased by 21 percentage points during the period, cancer deaths increased by 30 percentage points.These statistics do not even begin to show that cancer is a growing problem in the United States. The numbers provided would even be consistent with a decreasing cancer threat, so long as the threat of heart disease declined even faster. And as a matter of fact, that’s almost exactly what has happened.
If you download the SEER report cited by the authors (in pdf format) and look at Figure I-2 (page 42), you’ll see that cancer was responsible for 23.0% of deaths in 1999 versus 17.7% in 1973 -- a 30% increase in the percentage (yes, that’s a percentage of a percentage), as the authors indicate. But if you go to the very next page (Figure I-3), you’ll see that the number of cancer deaths per 100,000 actually went down by about 20% for people under the age of 65 during the 1973-99 period, while rising by just over 10% for people over 65. You’ll also notice that in both pictures, the number of deaths from heart disease per 100,000 fell dramatically over the same period. (Note on interpreting the graphs: “neoplasms” is another word for tumors -- in other words, cancer.)
Of course, old people die a lot more than young people, so the rate for the whole population could have increased. But if you look at Table I-2 (page 18), you’ll see that the U.S. cancer death rate rose by just a tenth of a percent annually from 1975 to 1999, which is not nearly as scary as the authors imply in the article. (The figures are age-adjusted to take into account changing demographics, so the small increase is presumably not attributable to the aging of the population. It might, however, be attributable to the fact that some of the elderly people who would have died of other illnesses died of cancer instead -- which again does not indicate an increase in the cancer threat.) It also turns out that cancer death rates have been falling since the early 1990s (new document, Table II-3, page 3).
Friday, August 29, 2003
Tragically Hip Replacement
I got every question right on this slang trivia quiz, which means, of course, that all of the slang used in the quiz is hopelessly passé. Yeah, sure, there were one or two terms that gave me pause (never heard anyone use “aggro” to mean “upset” before), but most of the “new” slang was positively ancient: who doesn’t know what “bogart,” “jonesing,” “dis,” and “benjamins” mean? The fact that these terms are included in an online quiz is a sure sign that none of the cool kids are using them anymore.
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
More on Soviet-Style Education
A peculiar thing about American colleges and universities, whether public or private, is that they typically have to buy labor in competitive markets – but sell it at a fixed price in their internal markets. When a college wants to hire a new professor, they have to bid against other schools as well as the non-academic sector. The better are the opportunities available elsewhere, the higher the salary offer must be. Thus, for example, finance professors are typically paid very well relative to, say, English professors. Why? Because someone with financial expertise usually has very lucrative prospects in the outside world, prospects not available to someone whose expertise is late-18th century English lit.
But despite their differing costs of production, the educational services produced by these two professors are not priced separately. In most universities, as far as I can tell, tuition per credit hour is the same regardless of the discipline. If you take a finance class, you have to pay only as much as you would for an English class. Students are overpaying for the low-cost English classes and underpaying for the high-cost finance classes, which means the former are subsidizing the latter. Of course, this is only a supply-side analysis; the full analysis would take into account the differing demands for finance and English. But for many disciplinary comparisons, adding the demand side would only strengthen my point, because demand is often greatest for those disciplines most costly to provide. The same fact that makes finance professors expensive to hire – lucrative opportunities in the world of finance – makes the finance major an enticing one.
It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the fixed pricing scheme misallocates students among majors. If prices rose for finance and fell for English, more students would choose English relative to the status quo. That might seem like a bad outcome, given the greater job opportunities of the finance major, until you take the cost side into account: the new English majors would be compensated by having fatter pocketbooks as a result of lower tuition. The larger point is that you have to do a rate-of-return analysis: the gross return on an English major might be low, but the return per dollar invested in one's education would be higher if English tuition were lower.
The question, then, is why the system is the way it is. Is it truly economically irrational, or does some other factor – such as high transaction costs or the logistics of menu pricing – justify keeping the status quo? The best explanation I can think of (at the moment, anyway) is that since most of these institutions are non-profit, they lack the necessary incentives to get the pricing scheme right. As a test of this hypothesis, we could look at for-profit institutions like DeVry to see if they have differential pricing by subject.
American Education, Soviet Style
Yesterday was the first day of class for fall, and thus a hellish nightmare as usual. I had literally twice as many students who wanted to register for one of my courses as there were available seats. This shortage is, of course, due in part to the California budget crisis -- but only in severity, as shortages are the norm here. In class, I pointed out the excess demand for seats in the class, and said that if the students remembered their microeconomics, they would know this meant the price was too low.
Every semester when I encounter this situation, I am tempted to auction the seats to the highest bidders (raising the price until the number of students willing to pay is equal to the number of seats available). But I’m pretty sure this would be considered an ethical violation, even if I dutifully handed the proceeds over to the college or rebated them lump-sum to all auction participants. Instead, since rationing by price is not allowed, I will have to ration the seats by means of personal whim and caprice.
Friday, August 22, 2003
My New Favorite Suffix
Every day, Merriam-Webster emails me a Word of the Day. Today’s word is “poetaster,” meaning a second-rate or inferior poet. According to the accompanying commentary, -aster is a Latin suffix (hey, they didn’t teach me that one in high school!) that indicates “partial resemblance” or “inferiority.” And it turns out there are several other English words with the -aster suffix, including criticaster (think Gene Shalit), politaster (Gray Davis), and philosophaster (William Bennett).
Despite the resemblance, the dictionary tells me that poetaster and its ilk do not share etymology with disaster and pederasty. But the similarity only adds to the derogatory power of the suffix.
I think this is a rich source of new word coinages. The possibilities are endless: bloggeraster, econaster (not economaster, because that “master” part could get confusing), columnaster, journalaster… This is fun! C’mon, try your own!
The Rape Conundrum
Radley Balko has a friend who “doesn't think our criminal justice system is capable of handling rape, given that it’s so often a he said/she said thing, and that the results for both parties are so damning.” I think there’s something to this. The difficulty with rape as a crime is that it depends crucially on a single mental event: consent, an ephemeral phenomenon that takes place entirely within the mind. There is no unambiguous physical evidence of consent, because consent (or the lack thereof) can coexist with all sorts of physical circumstances. For the prosecution, even bruises and scratches aren’t good enough – some people like it rough. For the defense, clear and apparent sexual interest by the victim isn’t good enough – she can change her mind any time.
It might be objected that other crimes are like this, too. In a legal system largely based on individual rights and choice, consent is always of the essence, and consent is always ephemeral. Maybe the battery victim was actually a masochist who asked for it. Maybe Sears didn’t really want to keep that television, and didn’t mind that hoodlum walking out with it. But in those cases, while we can construct the hypotheticals, they just aren’t very plausible most of the time. The overwhelming majority of people aren’t masochists, and profit-maximizing firms don’t generally give away their products for free. To get away with these claims, the defense would have to adduce some strong evidence – e.g., the victim’s previous sado-masochistic relationships, or Sears’s advertising campaign in which it promised to give TVs to 10 lucky winners. Otherwise, the strong presumption is against consent. In the case of rape, however, no such strong presumption of non-consent applies: people give away sex for free all the time.
Furthermore, in other kinds of case, all sorts of circumstantial evidence can be introduced in court. Murder motives are not just allowed but welcomed. If the alleged assault victim had prior sado-masochistic relationships, we’d like the jury to know it. While the issue is still one of consent, we accept a variety of historical indicators of whether a specific person would or wouldn’t have been likely to give such consent, or would or wouldn’t have been likely to violate someone else’s rights. With regard to rape, however, we have moved progressively in the other direction, at least with respect to the interests of victims. Many states have “rape-shield” laws that specifically prohibit any evidence regarding the previous sexual history of the alleged victim. Why? Because no matter what she did in the past, she has the ability and the right to change her behavior in the present, and maybe she did. Of course, the same is true of the alleged rapist, though evidence of his previous history is often allowed – read this fascinating op-ed on that subject.
Perhaps the law is justified in keeping out character evidence in rape cases because of the peculiar nature of the crime, though it’s rather hard to justify allowing such evidence to be introduced only in support of one party. Nonetheless, the more we move in the direction of ruling out all evidence of character and history that is not directly related to the specific event, the more we will be casting about fruitlessly trying to find physical evidence of a non-physical event.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
Jammu & Kashmir
Amy’s recent post on the subject of the Indian-Pakistani conflict in Kashmir provided me with the necessary excuse to make this post. Several months ago, when India and Pakistan were rattling their sabers especially loudly, I sent an email to a friend who knows something about the region asking him, “What is so $#@!$ special about Kashmir that India and Pakistan are apparently willing to go to war (possibly nuclear war) over it?” My friend (who wishes to remain anonymous) eventually sent me the following reply, which I found quite edifying. (As a disclaimer, however, I really know next to nothing about the issue myself, and thus cannot pass judgment on his accuracy.)
First, generally, the name "Kashmir" is misused if the person using it is referring to the entire region. The entire State/Province is collectively known as "Jammu & Kashmir" which comprises the regions of "Jammu," "Kashmir," and "Ladakh." Also, the entire region contains three major religious groups, Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists. Muslims are the majority overall, but not necessarily in every individual region of Jammu & Kashmir.Probably the most disturbing part of this story is the second-to-last paragraph. What can you do with a group of people who know nothing but terrorism?
India and Pakistan used to be one family (collectively known as India). At first, when India was partitioned, it was like one family was being divided, and in some ways, their relations resembled a family feud. This was how it was until the late 1980s. In 1989, a major conflict erupted within India's section of Jammu & Kashmir after elections in the region were found to have been rigged (to favor pro-Indian politicians, as opposed to separatists or pro-Pakistan politicians). It was a stupid/arrogant thing to do on the part of some Indian government leaders. (The most recent elections held in 2002 were relatively fairer and freer and had a good turnout of 48%, better than most American elections.)
As a result of the 1989 elections, the pro-Pakistanis and pro-Separatists (both groups comprised entirely of Muslims) violently rebelled and resorted to terrorism to meet their goals. Unfortunately, they did not target just Indian security forces, but also civilians (to ethnically cleanse the region and increase the percentage of Muslims). They targeted Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and even other Muslims (those who didn't agree with their agendas). The terrorists primarily use fear/intimidation/violence as a means of getting supporters or silencing their critics.
Pakistan has been arming, training, and sheltering these terrorists, there is no question about that. This has made the situation difficult for India to resolve. In addition, unemployed Afghan mujahadeen (now mercenaries) from the Soviet-Afghan war have turned up in the region.
(Clearly, the Reagan administration was naive, ignorant, or just didn't care if they thought there would be no fallout from supporting, training, and arming the mujahadeen in Afganistan. This is how many Al-Qaeda and Taliban got their initial funding and training. These people were clearly more dangerous, unpredictable, and much less rational than the Soviets were. Plus, Afganistan actually ended up being even more worse off when the Soviets left. But, as with most American policies, nothing really looks beyond the short-term.)
Now, even the terrorists are divided. Some are pro-independent Kashmir (and within this group, some want a secular Kashmir, others want an Islamic state made out of Kashmir; India does not want a radical Islamic state on its doorstep). Others are pro-Pakistan and want the region to join Pakistan. As for other terrorists (particularly those Afghan and Arab mercenaries), they probably would prefer a radical Islamic state, but, for the most part, they probably prefer the status quo so they can continue enjoying killing and terrorizing innocent people. Killing is all these people know, and the only skill they were ever trained in. How can they be integrated back into civil society?
But, for India, Jammu & Kashmir remaining a part of the country doesn't only have to do with protecting the large minority ethnic/religious groups in the region, or with keeping a large chunk of real estate. Jammu & Kashmir is rich in some natural resources. Plus, a lot of the water the rest of India uses originates in the snow-capped mountains of Jammu & Kashmir. Considering some parts of India have been suffering droughts as of late, the water issue is no small thing and, for them, worth going to war over.
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Website Plug
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Dan Savage is hilarious. This week's Savage Love (first letter especially) had me LMAO.
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
Little Things That Bother Me
Reason’s Hit & Run is a great blog, but every time I visit the site the subtitle gives me pause:
Continuous news, views, and abuse by the Reason staffOkay, so should I go for the grammatical consistency of three nouns in a row, and therefore pronounce “abuse” as “abewss”? Or am I supposed to go for the three-word rhyme and pronounce it “abewz”?
Gays of Our Lives
What explains the right’s fear of homosexuality? The usual answers range from the religious (“they were just raised thinking sodomy is morally wrong”) to the psychological (“they harbor unresolved feelings of homosexuality themselves and fear they might say yes if propositioned by a gay man”). These explanations may well be correct, but they’ve always seemed a bit too ad hoc for my taste. The religious explanation in particular strikes me as a “theory of the data set” – a theory whose explanatory power is limited to a specific historical phenomenon, with no wider applicability or predictive power. Many religions do not condemn homosexuality with the fervor of the fundamentalist Christians, and many individuals have managed to escape the teachings of their childhood religions. Given these facts, it’s just too easy to say “religion makes them do it,” because then we need an explanation of why this particular religious view has had such influence and staying power.
These thoughts sprang to mind when I watched VH1’s “Totally Gay,” a retrospective on the influence of homosexuality on popular culture over the last 10 to 20 years. The show was surprisingly insightful for a VH1 filler piece, and a couple of its observations jumped out at me as potentially more fruitful explanations for the anti-gay backlash. They are probably not the primary reasons for anti-gay sentiment, but I wonder if they might at least play a part.
At one point, the show’s narrator said, “You can’t take the sexuality out of homosexuality, so the rising visibility of homosexuals has sexualized the culture.” Or something like that. And I think there’s a nugget of truth there. Unlike other marginalized groups like ethnic and religious minorities, homosexuals are a group identified entirely by their sexual behavior or orientation. The growing visibility of such a group has got to have an effect on the sexuality of the culture in general. It’s pretty difficult to talk about homosexuality without talking about sex. It’s no secret that sexual humor and sexual situations are increasingly common in television and movies, and a lot of it has homosexual undercurrents (or overcurrents). Now, I’m okay with that, as are most people I willingly associate with: sex talk is fun! But lots of people are uncomfortable with sex, and for them this is an undesirable development. The anti-sex attitude most likely has religious roots, so maybe I’m back to the old ad-hoc “religion makes them do it” explanation, but with a twist. We don’t have to assert the existence of a pure “homosexuality-bad” meme within the religious structure; instead, we can view the homosexuality-bad notion as the consequence of a general discomfort with sex, combined with the empirical tendency of homosexual visibility to increase the visibility of sexuality more generally.
Another point made in the show was that homosexual norms vis-Ã -vis personal grooming, hygiene, fashion, and health have raised the bar for heterosexual men in all those areas. “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” is only the latest instance of the phenomenon. One of the show’s commentators noted that when a buff gay man walks into a restaurant or gym, all the straight women’s heads turn – and the hetero men notice that. Straight guys have begun to realize that they look and dress like slobs compared to women’s gay friends, and women are now more likely to demand that straight men rise to the challenge. Before gays became prominent in pop culture, it was virtually unheard of for a straight man to get a facial or shave any part of his body except his face. Now, it’s becoming common – witness the “metrosexuals,” about whom I’ll provide no hyperlinks because they’ve been blogged to death already. Notice also that Maxim magazine, the quintessential magazine for the regular (hetero) guy, has now endorsed a line of hair coloring products. Point being, straight men as a group are having to meet higher standards because of the visibility of gay men, and some of them may resent it.
I’m hesitant to say that the expectation-raising effect explains the anti-gay backlash, because the straight men most affected by it are young single men of my generation and younger, a group that is not notably anti-gay. But it is, nonetheless, a real development that I hadn’t really thought about before, and compared to the usual reasons offered for anti-gay attitudes (which, as Julian notes, are so intellectually flaccid that it would be offensive to assume those who make them actually believe them), it’s a reason that would actually be marginally more rational. No one likes to be the victim of higher standards.
Monday, August 18, 2003
Return of the Dread Pirate Roberts
A few months ago, I tackled Paul Craig Roberts’s protectionist arguments against foreign outsourcing. Now Daniel Griswold of Cato takes a swing. His arguments are largely the same as mine, but he musters a lot of actual data (!) that I didn’t have handy. Read the whole thing. (Thanks to Tyler Cowen for the pointer.)
Sunday, August 17, 2003
Pseudo Cum Laude
Number 2 Pencil relates the sad, sad story of a young woman who would be her class’s valedictorian if not for her inability to pass a basic math proficiency exam. Eugene (thanks for the pointer) quotes Joanne Jacobs’s summary of the story: “They were giving her As for being a good kid. But they weren't teaching her.”
All this reminded me of a key passage in one of my favorite books, The Bonfire of the Vanities. I’m cutting it down substantially so this post won’t be ridiculously long… but as the saying goes, read the whole thing. And by thing, I mean the book.
“Actually, I’m calling to inquire about one of your students, a young Mr. Henry Lamb.”
“Henry Lamb. Doesn’t ring a bell. What’s he done?”
“Oh, he hasn’t done anything. He’s been seriously injured.”
…
“Henry Lamb … Oh yes, I know who you mean. Well, that’s too bad.”
“What I would like to find out, Mr. Rifkind, is what kind of student Henry Lamb is.”
“What kind?”
“Well, would you say he was an outstanding student?”
…
“… I gather you’re not from New York. … Then there’s no reason you should know anything about Colonel Jacob Ruppert High School in the Bronx. At Ruppert we use comparative terms, but outstanding isn’t one them. The range runs more from cooperative to life-threatening.” …
“Well, how would you describe Henry Lamb?”
“Cooperative. He’s a nice fellow. Never gives me any trouble.”
“Would you describe him as a good student?”
“Good doesn’t work too well at Ruppert, either. It’s more ‘Does he attend class or doesn’t he?’”
“Did Henry Lamb attend class?”
“As I recall, yes. He’s usually there. He’s very dependable. He’s a nice kid, as nice as they come.”
“Was there any part of the curriculum he was particularly good – or, let me say, adept at, anything he did better than anything else?”
“Not particularly.”
…
“Will Henry Lamb graduate, or would he have?”
“As far as I know. As I say, he has a very good attendance record.”
…
“Let me ask you this. How does he do on his written work?”
…
“Written work? There hasn’t been any written work at Ruppert High for fifteen years! Maybe twenty! They take multiple-choice tests. Reading comprehension, that’s the big thing. That’s all the Board of Education cares about.”
“How was Henry Lamb’s reading comprehension?”
“I’d have to look it up. Not bad, if I had to guess.”
“Better than most? Or about average? Or what would you say?”
…
“…these kids haven’t reached the level where it’s worth emphasizing the kind of comparisons you’re talking about. We’re just trying to get them up to a certain level and then keep them from falling back. You’re thinking about ‘honor students’ and ‘higher achievers’ and all that, and that’s natural enough, as I say. But at Colonel Jacob Ruppert High School, an honor student is somebody who attends class, isn’t disruptive, tries to learn, and does all right at reading and arithmetic.”
“Well, let’s use that standard. By that standard, is Henry Lamb an honor student?”
“By that standard, yes.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Rifkind.”
Saturday, August 16, 2003
Devolution
I really dislike almost any form of political or religious message on a car, whether in bumper sticker form or some other medium, such as the metallic Jesus fish. The only ones I like at all are those that make fun of others, such as the metallic Darwin fish (which I admit has officially outlasted its funniness phase). But at least the original versions of both the Jesus and Darwin fish gave tailgaters some intellectual credit. To understand the original two-stroke fish, you at least have to know what the symbol means (though you may not know its early Christian history and so on). Likewise for the two-stroke-with-legs Darwin fish. But now they insist on spelling it out for you, literally: the symbols almost always have the letters “JESUS” or “DARWIN” crammed inside. So much for subtlety.
Friday, August 15, 2003
Made Me Laugh Department
Two great photos, with commentary, posted at The Agitator:
Gray Davis Inflatable Doll
Would You Like Your Giza Deep Dish or Thin Crust?
Actually, the latter link really belongs in the Made Me Smile Department, but I didn’t want to make two different blog posts.
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Kobeconomics
I’m mildly perplexed by Tyler Cowen’s take on the Kobe trial [note: the permalink is not working correctly, so you’ll have to search for “Kobe” around 9 August]:
Should economists think that Kobe Bryant is innocent? Don't we teach our students, first and foremost, that incentives matter? Didn't Kobe have huge and obvious incentives not to do it? Wouldn't an attention-seeker victim have some incentive to lie and stretch the story? Even if, heaven forbid, a guy had rape as his goal, rather than sex, wouldn't an economic model predict he would pick a different state and county? Yet I have asked a few economists, market-oriented economists, the kind who believe in the power of incentives, and they all think Kobe is guilty as charged (admittedly my sample is not huge).First, as to Kobe’s guilt or innocence, I’m resolutely agnostic: I don’t know all the facts, so I feel thoroughly unqualified to pass judgment. I’m also militantly agnostic: I don’t know, and you don’t either.
Second, as to whether economics has something to say on the matter, I think the answer has to be a qualified “no.” The predictions of microeconomic decision theory are rarely, if ever, so specific that they tell us the actual choices of particular individuals. We usually make pattern predictions, not point predictions. Economic theory tells us that, other things equal, a greater expectation of punishment for rape should result in a smaller number of rapes. And it tells us that, other things equal, the existence of more readily available substitutes for rape (i.e., lots of willing sex partners) should result in a smaller number of rapes. But economic theory does not tell us the actual number of rapes that will occur, and it certainly doesn’t tell us that it will be zero for certain individuals.
I am not just making the point that Tyler recognized in his post, that “[s]ome economists argue that economic laws apply to averages and aggregates, in a market setting, and not necessarily to individuals.” I do think economic laws apply to individuals, at least to some extent. The point is that the kind of predictions we can make about individuals aren’t that precise. I’m willing to say this much: that a rich and famous Kobe Bryant (who has lots to lose from committing rape and many available substitutes) is less likely to commit rape than a poor and unknown Kobe Bryant (who has less to lose and fewer substitutes). But that’s as far as I can go, and "less likely" doesn't mean "never." Microeconomic theory rests on subjectivist underpinnings, which means that the strength of an economic incentive with respect to any particular person is unknown a priori.
Monday, August 11, 2003
Brace Yourself
Despite the thousands of people who get cosmetic surgery every year, there's still a bias against it. There's a common, though by no means universal, perception that people who get nose jobs, boob jobs, tummy tucks, etc., are often deficient in some way: their lack of self-esteem makes them hate their own bodies, or their lack of self-discipline makes them resort to surgery instead of exercise. On top of these attitudinal judgments, which some people are willing to voice in public, I suspect there is an unstated physical judgment as well: someone who gets cosmetic surgery must not be naturally beautiful, and natural beauty is superior to artificial beauty, right?
But oddly, there is one kind of cosmetic medical treatment that is regarded differently from all the others: teeth straightening. Nobody is ever looked down upon for having worn braces (although there is sometimes teasing during the actually brace-wearing phase, especially if headgear is involved). Someone who has straight teeth without orthodontic work is regarded as lucky, but not superior. Far from being stigmatized, procedures to fix your teeth are regarded as normal and even expected.
Why the inconsistency? I'm not sure, but (naturally) I have some theories. One is that the stigma against cosmetic medical treatments has a "necessity" escape clause. If you have nose surgery to fix a deviated septum that hinders your breathing, that's okay, even if you look radically different afterward. Similarly, fixing your teeth might be necessary to facilitate eating, stop you from biting your tongue all the time, and so on. But I don't think this theory works, because no one expects you to justify your braces by reference to your TMJ disorder.
Another theory is that orthodontists have simply done a better PR job than plastic surgeons. They've successfully spread the idea that having straight teeth is a sign of good breeding, even hygiene, equivalent to having a clear complexion or getting a good haircut. But this theory raises the question of what orthodontists did to get this result, and why plastic surgeons haven't successfully followed the same strategy.
A third theory - and my favorite - is that people are expected to exhibit swiftly diminishing marginal utility from body modification. Everyone's entitled to a certain amount, but the more you have done, the more likely it is that your real problem is mental. On one end of the spectrum, we have a person who gets one nose job; on the other end, we have Michael Jackson. While it's hard to draw the line on the spectrum between functional and dysfunctional, to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart's comment on obscenity, we know dysfunctionality when we see it. And since teeth-straightening is usually the first - and often the only - body modification that someone gets, no stigma yet applies. Add on a nose job, and the stigma (if any) is still mild. Add on two tummy tucks, a facelift, monthly Botox treatments, another nose job, and a chin implant… welcome to stigmaland. (For bonus points, apply this same theory to body piercings and tattoos.)
Incidentally, my comments here are not meant in any way to contribute to (or detract from) the stigma I'm talking about. I'm just trying to understand why people have the attitudes they do, not justify them. And yes, in case you're wondering, I have been watching FX's new show "Nip/Tuck."
Sunday, August 10, 2003
Holy Deceptive Numbers, Statman!
Mark Kleiman recently penned an excellent article about how “counting the winners and ignoring the losers” allowed researchers to fudge the effectiveness of the InnerChange Freedom Initiative in rehabilitating criminals. This kind of statistical bias is nothing new, of course. But because of Mark’s article, the topic happened to be on the tip of my cerebral cortex when I opened a piece of junk mail from 21st Century Insurance. The letter states that “On average, new customers report saving $300.00 each year.” Sounds impressive, until you think about it for more than a couple of seconds. The problem is that only the people who called 21st and discovered they could actually save money switched over and became new customers. Those who called 21st and discovered they would lose money by doing so are thus excluded from the sample.
At least the company is not being duplicitous – they do say “new customers.” If they had said, “On average, you can save $300 by switching to 21st Century Insurance,” that would have been truly misleading. Still, I wonder how many people who receive the ad get the false impression that 21st Century must be offering systematically lower rates than its competitors.
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