The House of Representatives just passed a bill to ban lawsuits against the food industry for making people fat. I oppose this bill on federalism grounds: the federal government has no business deciding this kind of matter, except with regard to the federal courts. (The law would apply to both state and federal courts.) In addition, given Congress’s talent for botching even the best ideas, I worry that the law might be drafted badly. The biggest danger is that too-broad wording could make it difficult to launch legitimate lawsuits for mislabeled or tainted food. As the friend who sent me the link said, “It’s always suspicious when Congress gets involved in deciding which lawsuits are okay and which ones aren’t; particularly when a member of Congress receives political contributions from cigarette or gun manufacturers, or, most likely in this case, the fast food industry.”
Still, at least Congress is on the right side of the substantive issue here. The McDonald’s-made-me-fat lawsuits are outrageous, and it’s pleasing to see Congress taking a stand in favor of personal responsibility and choice for once. Yeah, they’re assuredly getting campaign donations from Big Food corporations – but in this case, the corporations are right. (Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if they backed small changes in the wording that would protect them against more legitimate lawsuits.)
At the moment, the problem is not dire, and the legislation is premature. None of the fat lawsuits has succeeded – yet. So far, the courts have done the right thing. But if these lawsuits begin to win, legislation (federal or state, as necessary) will indeed be justified. Congress mucks with judicial precedent all the time to limit freedom and weaken personal responsibility. A movement, however small, in the other direction would be a welcome change.
Thursday, March 11, 2004
Preemptive Legislative Strike
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Random Observation
When you eat any chocolaty Girl Scout cookie right after brushing your teeth, it tastes like a Thin Mint.
Does Abortion Decrease Abortion?
Alex links to a cool article by Donohue, Grogger, and Levitt, which claims that legalized abortion is responsible for the recent decline in unmarried teen childbearing. This is not as obvious as it sounds, because the drop in unmarried teen childbearing began about 16 years after Roe v. Wade. DG & L attribute the decrease to an abortion-induced drop in the number of teenagers who would be likely to get pregnant. In short, people aborted the fetuses that would have been most likely to get pregnant 13 to 19 years later. Here’s how DG & L put it:
While the link between the current availability of abortion and teen childbearing is straightforward (since abortion is an alternative to carrying a baby to term), the relationship we focus on is far more subtle: legalized abortion in the 1970s led to fewer babies being born under circumstances in which their parents were less willing or able to provide nurturing environments. When these cohorts grew up to be teenagers, their improved childhood environment had the benign effect of reducing the frequency with which they themselves became teen mothers.Now here’s an interesting possibility: abortions in the 1970s may have had a downward impact on the number of abortions in the 1990s. DG & L’s results show that unmarried teen childbirths decreased in the 1990s as a result of earlier abortions. So far as I can tell (from skimming the article), they do not break down the different routes for the reduction in childbirths – some of the reduction would be from abortions, some from pregnancies that never occurred in the first place. Thus, earlier abortions presumably helped to reduce later abortions.
This is, of course, a partial offsetting effect, not a total effect. Looking at DG & L’s Figure 3, we see that the total number of abortions rose from 1973 to 1981 and then stabilized. But interestingly, the figures are not per capita (unless they’ve been population-adjusted without any note of that fact), which means there must have been a decline in abortions per capita since 1981. I’m not sure where that would put the latest per capita abortion figures relative to pre-1973, but I’m guessing the recent figures would still be higher. Nonetheless, it’s fascinating that abortion could actually produce its own offsetting effect.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
Theories of Punctuality
I love it when economists show up sociologists. Alex points to a seemingly good example: why do different cultures have different attitudes toward punctuality? The sociologists’ explanation appeals to “national personality,” religion, etc. The economists’ explanation relies on simple game theory. Arrival-time behavior is a kind of coordination game: you want to arrive at the same time the other guy does, and he wants to arrive at the same time you do. In this kind of game, there exist multiple equilibria, all of them viable (though not necessarily all desirable). Alex’s analogy to left-versus-right-side driving is excellent: both left-side driving and right-side driving are equilibria of the system, so there’s no particular reason to predict one equilibrium over the other.
Economists: 1
Sociologists: ½
Why am I willing to give the sociologists half a point? Because Alex’s analogy also illustrates a problem with the pure game-theoretic explanation. Although it explains why we can observe different equilibria, the theory tells us very little about why one equilibrium happens and the other does not. Why do the British and Japanese drive on the left, while Americans and French drive on the right? Yes, both left and right are equilibria, but why did some cultures end up in one and some cultures in the other? Random chance is one explanation, but legislative decree (as in Alex’s Swedish example) is another. So the antiseptic game theory model tells us just enough to indicate more historical and cultural research may be required. And the same goes for punctuality: the game theory explains why it makes sense that we’d observe different norms, but it doesn’t tell us why the punctuality norm occurred in the places that it did. Random chance might explain the pattern – it was just an accident that Latin American countries happened to evolve a lateness norm – but then again, maybe something else was at work. Maybe influential people at some point in Spanish history had a propensity for lateness, and their activities created the focal point around which others’ expectations formed. In short, an economic theory that predicts multiple equilibria doesn’t shut the door to sociological explanations – it opens it.
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Old Yeller
Radley approvingly posts a letter he found in the Washington Post, which says among other things:
The Feb. 14 editorial "Focus on Red-Runners" mentioned a Fairfax City study that apparently showed a 44 percent drop in one year in red-light running at five intersections with cameras. But it did not mention the results of a 2001 analysis by the National Motorists Association of a Fairfax County intersection. That organization found that red-light violations dropped 96 percent at the intersection when yellow light time was increased from 4 seconds to 5.5 seconds.The implication, of course, is that the government should extend the length of yellow lights. Apparently something is “special” about the difference between 4.0 and 5.5 seconds, which makes those added 1.5 seconds especially useful in avoiding accidents.
A 1998 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety also found that 80 percent of red-light entries occur within the first second of the light turning red, indicating that inadequate yellow time is the major cause of red-light entries.
I don’t buy it. The 96% reduction in red-light violations was almost assuredly a temporary effect, brought on by the fact that people adjust their driving behavior to the expected duration of yellow lights. People are willing to go through a yellow if they think it will last just long enough to get them about halfway through the intersection before it turns red. If the duration were permanently raised to 5.5 seconds, people’s unconscious timers would gradually readjust, and they would start blowing through yellows that under the 4.0 regime would have seemed stale.
And then, if someone performed another study on the effect of increasing the duration of yellows from 5.5 to 7 seconds, I’ll bet it would have the same effect: a dramatic but temporary reduction in red light violations, which could be used by the credulous to justify another increase in the yellow light time.
UPDATE: Radley responds, pointing out some studies that apparently show the driver adjustment effect I’m talking about is small. Unfortunately, the studies are unavailable on the web. Radley also gives more details about the 96% reduction:
In 2001, the National Motorists Association persuaded the Virginia DOT to lengthen the yellow light at one particularly egregious intersection in Fai[r]fax by 1.5 seconds -- from 4.0 seconds to 5.5. A camera installed at the intersection monitored the number of infractions. About 70 days after the yellow was increased, infractions fell from 52.1 per day [to] less than one per day -- or about 96%.I’m still skeptical, because this could easily be the result of the change having been made at a single traffic light. My “internal timer” is not so finely tuned that it knows the typical length of all the different traffic lights, even the ones I go through regularly. I assess the expected length of a yellow light by reference to all the yellow lights I deal with. So it doesn’t surprise that extending the yellow on a single intersection might result in a substantial reduction in red-light infractions at that one light. But it doesn’t follow that extending the duration of yellows at all the intersections would have a similar effect, because people would then get used to the longer yellows. The conclusion that does follow is that extending the yellow at especially notorious intersections might be an effective strategy, because it makes use of internal timers that have been calibrated on the basis of shorter yellows.
That was three years ago. NMA reports that infractions at that intersection have remained at about .80 per day in the three years since.
I’ll concede (as I did in the comments box) that there might be an optimal duration for yellow lights, but I still stand by my argument that this experiment is very far from proving it. I also agree with Radley's broader point, which is that local governments seem more interested in maximizing revenue than preventing traffic violations.
Can This Be Right?
Eugene posts the following New York statute, and I want to know if I’m reading it correctly:
If any clergyman or other person authorized by the laws of this state to perform marriage ceremonies shall solemnize or presume to solemnize any marriage between any parties without a license being presented to him or them as herein provided or with knowledge that either party is legally incompetent to contract matrimony as is provided for in this article he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not less than fifty dollars nor more than five hundred dollars or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year.The statute is suddenly relevant because the mayor of New Paltz has been performing marriages of gay couples (who don’t have marriage licenses). But as written, this statute would apply to clergymen as well.
Now, suppose that I’m a minister, and as such I am authorized by the state to perform marriage ceremonies. And suppose that I officiate for a marriage ceremony without a marriage license, and with no pretense of this marriage having the state’s sanction. Everyone involved understands this to be a religious marriage, with no more legal significance than the state should choose to grant it. Notice that I haven’t specified the sexes of the participants. My actions would seem, under a commonsense definition of “solemnize” and a strict reading of the text, to fit within the statute’s language and therefore constitute a crime. If so, then the statute would also pretty clearly constitute a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of speech, association, and free exercise of religion. Does anyone know if “solemnize” has a more specific statutory meaning of which I’m not aware?
Monday, March 01, 2004
Federalism Cuts Both Ways
Eugene (who tentatively favors same-sex unions) says the following Constitutional amendment would be defensible on federalist grounds:
No part of this Constitution shall be interpreted as requiring any state, or the federal government, to recognize or allow same-sex marriages.I agree. But if we’re going to insert a new amendment purely for the purpose of safeguarding federalism, why not add the following?
Nor shall any part of this Constitution be interpreted as prohibiting any state, or the federal government, from recognizing or allowing same-sex marriages.This addendum would assure the correct federalist interpretation. Now, I suppose it might be superfluous, because the “part of this Constitution” that might conceivably be interpreted to require recognition of same-sex marriages is the Full Faith and Credit clause, and no plausible interpretation of that clause would prohibit a state from recognizing another state’s authorized same-sex marriages. Still, there’s nothing wrong with a little redundancy in defense of principle and clarity. Furthermore, tacking on this extra bit would force conservatives who oppose it to admit their disagreement with the federalist principles to which they so often pay lip-service.
Regulating Healthcare = Regulating Religion
Libertarians often emphasize that the distinction between personal liberties and economic liberties is a phantom one, because restrictions on economic liberty inevitably affect the personal sphere. Here’s an outstanding example: The California Supreme Court has ruled that the Catholic Church must provide birth control in its employees’ health plans.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) 3.1.04, 11:50a -- A Catholic charitable organization must include birth control coverage in its health care plan for workers even though the nonprofit is morally opposed to contraception, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.When the state starts meddling with the terms of contracts, as it does when it dictates the contents of health plans, entanglement with personal liberties, including freedom of religion, is sure to follow. The state can either (a) treat religious enterprises just like other enterprises, as the California high court has done, or (b) make a special exemption for religion, which puts the state in the position of deciding what a religion is and what its defining doctrines are (e.g., is opposition to contraception really inseparable from Catholic doctrine?). I'm curious to know whether abortion coverage is also required under state law.
…
The high court said Catholic Charities is no different than other businesses in California, which is one of 20 states that require company-provided health plans to include contraception coverage. In California, "religious employers" such as churches are exempt from the requirement.
In an earlier post, I argued that, when it comes to subsidies for education and other activities, the state ought to adopt a neutral policy that does not require it to decide what is religion and what is not. But in this case, we are not talking about the provision of a benefit by the state, but the imposition of a regulatory burden with the potential to interfere with free exercise. Forced to choose the lesser of two evils, I would reluctantly take option (b) above, as it provides at least a limited opportunity for people to escape the state’s regulations when they conflict with conscience. But it is the state’s unjustified regulatory policy that generates the need to choose between evils.
Stale Jackson Joke Makes Comeback
Look where Michael Jackson’s been shopping:
Michael Jackson was pulled over by police and asked to identify himself after shopping at a Wal-Mart while wearing a ski mask.Yep, he must’ve heard little boys' pants were half-off.
Thursday, February 26, 2004
A Constitution Is Not a Dictionary
Here’s the best thing I’ve seen written on the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage – and I found it on a linguistics blog.
Go ahead, make my day (as Dirty Harry used to say): if they want a wedge issue, bring it on. Let them go ahead and try to pass, for the first time in the history of our country, a constitutional amendment aimed at taking rights away from a proper subset of the people. (The prohibition amendment was an ill-advised subtractive social amendment of similar type, but at least it took away the specified rights from all of the people. It was a big mistake, anyway, and soon had to be repealed.) But don't let them try to tell me they are revising a definition. It's nothing to do with defining the word "marriage". Webster's has done that perfectly well. It's about a denial of rights. The idea is that if you fall in love with a lesbian and want to marry her and live with her forever and share your life and property with her and be with her until you sit by her side at the hospital when she dies, that's O.K., but your rights will be subject to a limitation: you will be permitted all this under the sanction of the institution of marriage if you are male, but denied such permission if you are female. To add an insistence on that point in the constitution would be an act of discrimination, not of definition, so let's call things the way they are.RTWT.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
We Won't Punish You, We'll Just Reward Everyone Else
The blogosphere is awash with discussion of the Supreme Court’s Davey decision, which essentially said the state can create a blanket education subsidy that specifically excludes religious education. I won’t rehash all the arguments – instead, I’ll link to both Amy and Eugene, both of whom get it exactly right. So does Justice Scalia’s dissent: “No field of study but religion is singled out for disfavor in this fashion.”
I will make one argument that I haven’t (yet) seen on anyone’s blog. This decision validates the notion that the state can draw a line between religion and non-religion, thus allowing it to fund the latter while denying funds to the former. The problem is that no such line exists. There is no unambiguous way to distinguish spiritual from secular ethical belief systems. Where, for instance, does Scientology lie on the spectrum from religion to non-religion? Originally, the Scientologists did not call their organization a “church”; they changed their tune when they realized they could get the benefits of First Amendment protection plus tax exemptions by going the full-on religion route. But there is nothing in the Scientologists’ belief system (so far as I know) that implies the existence of a deity or even a supernatural realm. Although the Scientologists chose to go in the secular-to-religious direction, it would certainly be possible for other groups to go the opposite direction in light of the Davey decision and policies like those of Washington state. Even if very few groups alter their creeds at the margin to exploit the state’s definition of religion, there will exist groups that sit near the arbitrary borderline, and these groups will be treated differently for essentially arbitrary reasons. Rather than put the state in the position of deciding what's religion and what's not, I would have the state adopt a neutral stance that requires no definition of religion.
No One Expects the Spammish Erudition
The last time I raised a puzzle about spamming strategies, a reader solved it in the comments box. So here’s another: What’s up with bogus sender names like the following?
Aristocracy O. SpenglerNaturally, spammers can’t give their real names. But why pick such bizarre fake ones? Do some people’s spam filters filter out normal names? Is some kind of random word generator being used? (If so, why not just use random letter sequences?) Does curiosity induce recipients to open more emails with unusual sender names?
Pique I. Prorating
Acanthus E. Dragooning
Pricy B. Hijacker
Corpulence P. Ecology
Book Me
Other libertarian bloggers who take the “What book are you?” Quiz have turned out to be Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But me, I turn out to be the freakin’ dictionary. Maybe that’s why their blogs get more traffic than mine.
You're The Dictionary!
by Merriam-Webster
You're one of those know-it-all types, with an amazing amount of knowledge at your command. People really enjoy spending time with you in very short spurts, but hanging out with you for a long time tends to bore them. When folks really need an authority to refer to, however, you're the one they seek. You're an exceptional speller and very well organized.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Bigots for Religious Tolerance
An audiotape with the voice of an Al Qaeda officer threatens more terrorist attacks – and criticizes France’s ban on Muslim head scarves in public buildings:
Two audiotapes purportedly of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant were broadcast on Arabic TV stations, one taunting President Bush and threatening more attacks on the United States, the other criticizing France's decision to ban Islamic headscarves in schools. ...The irony is rich. A leader of Al Qaeda, an organization dedicated to the establishment of a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy in the Middle East, champions the Western value of religious tolerance. France’s policy is, of course, abominable. But isn’t this a case of the cast-iron pot calling the tarnished-copper kettle black?
The audiotape aired by Dubai-based al-Arabiya criticized France's decision to ban religious symbols in public buildings, including headscarves worn by Muslim women. The law is expected to go before the French Senate early next month.
"The decision of the French president to issue a law to prevent Muslim girls from covering their heads in schools is another example of the Crusader's malice, which Westerners have against Muslims," the recording said.
Monday, February 23, 2004
Quote of the Day
Alex Tabarrok, on the topic of excessive security measures: "It seems to me that the price of eternal vigilance is liberty."
Sunday, February 22, 2004
Dissing the Disinfopedia
Will draws attention to the newly created Disinfopedia. It’s like a Wikipedia for information on interest groups, think tanks, and other potential sources of disinformation. But as Will notes, the site is explicitly ideological in nature; the idea is to show just how beholden such organizations are to the wealthy and powerful. The Wiki format, which allows readers to freely edit the text, does not seem ideally suited to the ideological goal. Says Will: “Wikipedia works because of its ethos of neutrality on contentious issues. If somebody writes something biased, somebody comes along and balances it out. It will be interesting to see if an overtly ideological wiki can survive.”
I was surprised that Will didn’t point out the double entendre of Disinfopedia’s name. It’s supposed to be an encyclopedia on sources of disinformation – but the more natural interpretation is that the site itself is a source of disinformation.
In the “think tank” entry, in which Will inserted a minor edit just for fun, I found the following passage:
Of course, some think tanks are more legitimate than that. Private funding does not necessarily make a researcher a shill, and some think-tanks produce worthwhile public policy research. In general, however, research from think tanks is ideologically driven in accordance with the interests of its funders.Now, think tanks’ positions do have an uncanny tendency to reflect the interests of their funders. But the implicit conclusion that causality runs in the funding-to-viewpoints direction does not follow. If the think tank is operated by committed supporters of some ideology, and they go out in search of funding, they are most likely to attract the support of those whose interests will be advanced by the ideology in question. Other sources of funding will withhold their funding and go elsewhere. As a result, we will observe a correspondence between funding and viewpoints, but with causality in just the opposite direction: from viewpoints to funding.
I’m not claiming that the choices of think tanks (and other non-profits) are never influenced by the desires of their financial supporters. If making a marginal change in a think tank’s position on a single issue could ease the job of attracting funds, even ideological managers might be tempted to do so, on grounds that gains in other areas from greater funding will outweigh the losses on a single issue. We could even imagine a slippery slope process that runs from a marginal decision like this one to wholesale changes in the think tank’s ideology, by way of personnel changes induced by the seemingly small position shifts. Moreover, the equilibrium number and size of think tanks presumably will have something to do with the general availability of funds for different positions. Nonetheless, the nefarious “guns for hire” implication of the Disinfopedia blurb does not seem justified. The interaction between funds and viewpoints is assuredly a two-way street.
Hey, maybe I should go insert all the above in the Disinfopedia entry and see what happens.
Friday, February 20, 2004
Inflation via Medicaid
Alex Tabarrok explains, briefly but lucidly, how Medicaid drives up prescription prices for everyone – and why the severity of the problem grows as Medicaid’s share of the market increases. I suspect the argument could be generalized to cover other markets in which government is a large-scale buyer.
Thursday, February 19, 2004
More on Publicly Funded Expression
Jack Balkin has responded to my post below. I won’t try to reply to all of his arguments, in part because Sasha Volokh and Juan Non-Volokh have already replied to some of them. But I do want to make a couple of points.
First, Jack overstates my position, thereby creating a strawman. He says, among other things:
But Glen overstates his case when he assumes that use of subsidies and provision of public goods is always suspicious and tyrannical in the same way that the use of criminal fines and penalities is suspicious and tyrannical. I think there is a big difference between throwing a person in jail for being a communist and deciding to create a public library so that children and adults can have books to read. There is a big difference between preventing all demonstrations on the town green and requiring that all schools that receive public funding teach reading and mathematics. There is a big difference between the local sheriff giving parade permits only to Democrats but not to Republicans and the local university deciding that it will offer courses on microbiology but not astrology. Glen has run together a wide variety of different activities under the simple rubric of government tyranny. [emphasis added]I never said that public funding of viewpoints is just as deplorable as the penalties and fines for the expression of particular views. It is not. I agree with all of the comparisons Jack makes (e.g., that it’s better to fund a public library than to jail a communist). But saying program A is preferable to the clearly awful program B does not imply the desirability of program A.
Second, in focusing on my final comment about the danger of having government try to distinguish good from bad ideas, Jack misses the primary argument of my post: that ideas create both positive and negative externalities. For that reason, his economic justification for public funding of the “ideas infrastructure” doesn’t stand up, because it rests on the implicit assumption that the positive externalities outweigh the negative ones at the margin. Jack focuses on the benefits of the public subsidy, without much consideration of the costs. I’ll point out just two examples of how state subsidy for particular forms of expression creates problems: (a) The Office of National Drug Control Policy spends lots of money funding anti-drug commercials that muddy the policy waters with bogus claims (e.g., by suggesting that drug users are funding terrorists) and gin up greater support for the immoral and destructive war on drugs. (b) Science funding that excludes politically unpopular areas of research, such as cloning and fetal stem cells, diverts resources and research programs away from those areas and into other areas likely to produce smaller benefits (such as adult stem cells).
Third, this is not just a First Amendment issue. I don’t claim that the First Amendment invalidates all forms of government-supported expression (hence, there is no constitutional requirement to “blow up” the Washington Monument). Some forms of government action are constitutional but still unjustified or undesirable, and that is my position on most, though perhaps not all, forms of public subsidy for expression.
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Market Failure in the Marketplace of Ideas
In a response to David Bernstein, Jack Balkin defends public universities on economic grounds: he claims that free expression creates positive externalities, and therefore private markets will underproduce opportunities for it:
For me, freedom of speech involves important infrastructural elements in technology and institutions that undergird and enrich the system of free expression, produce an educated citizenry and give them the tools and the practical opportunity to participate in the growth and development of culture. … Put in economic terms, the infrastructure of free expression is a public good that markets will underinvest in.Juan Non-Volokh takes apart the economic argument, pointing out that (a) the existence of positive externalities at most justifies subsidized universities, not government-run universities; (b) the prospect of government failure often outweighs market failure; and (c) government provision tends to crowd out private provision of public goods.
I wish to add one more response. As I’ve argued before (and I think Ronald Coase made the same point), ideas produce both positive and negative externalities. There is no discipline of profit-and-loss to assure the weeding out of the bad ideas and the retention of the good ones. As a result, the economic theory of market failure offers as much support for taxing and restricting expression as for subsidizing and promoting it. It is strange indeed that liberals who have nothing but contempt for product markets voice such confident support for the marketplace of ideas, even though the latter are subject to potential failures that are arguably much greater.
If the government could distinguish between the good and bad ideas, then it could subsidize only the good ones. But I have little or no confidence in government’s ability to make such distinctions wisely, and the blanket subsidization of public universities assures funding of both the good and the bad. The strongest case for freedom of expression, I would argue, rests not on economic efficiency but on the inherent danger in giving a coercive government the power to decide what’s good and bad in the realm of ideas. From that perspective, David Bernstein’s position makes a great deal of sense: having public universities ipso facto puts the government in the position of having to make distinctions that it has no business making.
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Economics of the Afterlife
Religious visions of reward-and-punishment in the afterlife fall into two basic categories. One category consists of what I will call “precipice” regimes, in which there are just two afterlife outcomes: heaven and hell. If you commit more than some threshold number of sins (possibly just one), you go to hell; otherwise you go to heaven. Many Protestant faiths seem to fall in this category. The other category consists of what I will call “gradient” regimes, in which there is a range of afterlife outcomes lying between sheer torment and pure bliss. In Mormonism (or so I am told), there are many different levels of heaven, and which one you reach depends on your behavior in this life. In Catholicism, how much you’ve sinned in this life determines the amount of time you spend in Purgatory. In Hinduism, your behavior now determines what kind of creature or class of person you’ll become upon resurrection.
Assuming that afterlife regimes are designed to deter bad (sinful) behavior, what beliefs about people’s preferences and choice mechanisms are implied by each type of regime? Let’s say you’re a deity who currently presides over a gradient regime, and you’re considering a switch to a precipice regime. Doing so will induce some individuals, who would have committed some number of sins under a gradient regime, not to commit any sins at all (if the hell-threshold is one sin) or to commit just under the threshold number of sins. That’s the upside. The downside is that individuals who have already passed the threshold will have no incentive to behave well. Since they’re already going to hell, they might as well commit all the sins they want. In addition, people sufficiently far below the threshold will have no incentive not to commit additional sins (unless there’s uncertainty about where the threshold lies). Thus, there’s a trade-off involved in the choice of regimes, and individual preferences and choice mechanisms will determine which regime is the more effective in deterring sins.
I hypothesize that precipice regimes are appropriate if you think that the utility of committing sins is relatively constant over time, whereas gradient regimes are appropriate if there will be occasional opportunities for sinning that are of such high utility that they cannot be resisted by many people regardless of punishment. The downside of a precipice regime is particularly high in the latter case, because many people will succumb to large temptations and then, figuring their souls are lost anyway, commit many more transgressions. On the other hand, if there are few super-sized temptations and many small-to-medium ones, the precipice regime might be more successful in deterring them, because people under a gradient regime will balance each additional sin against the minor reduction in afterlife status that will accompany it, and some medium-sized sins will be enjoyable enough to be worth it.
A precipice regime might also be more effective in preventing addictive sins, defined as sins with increasing marginal utility of commission: the more of the sin you’ve committed, the greater is your desire to do it again. Under a gradient regime, people who commit their first addictive sin will have an increasing inclination to do so repeatedly (unless the gradient becomes steeper and steeper as the number of sins rises). A precipice regime could not prevent the additional sinning, but it would stand a better chance of inducing people not to commit the very first sin.
Next up: mixed regimes, in which some sins are treated with a gradient and others with a precipice.
Monday, February 16, 2004
Barbecue Day
A student sent this letter to Jolene Koester, the president of my university, and for some reason I was CC’ed (along with two other people). I figure it’s an open letter, but just in case it’s not, I’m leaving out the student’s name.
I will not be attending class today. This day is a national holiday set aside to honor the presidents of the United States of America, especially George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. These men showed uncommon courage and leadership in successfully leading our country through some of the most difficult times in history. I could elaborate, but there are volumes of historical information about these and all the other US presidents.My first reaction was to snort; I figure this student is less concerned about honoring freedom and democracy than attending a backyard barbecue. But then I thought, what’s wrong with that? Lucky for me, I don’t teach on Mondays, so I’ll be attending a barbecue myself – not because I admire the presidents (I can count the ones I truly admire on one hand), but because I like barbecue. And it is pretty bizarre that CSUN takes off Cesar Chavez Day but not Presidents’ Day. Setting aside the question of which day is more worth celebrating, there’s something to be said for the coordinating function of holidays: it’s easier to organize fun activities when everyone gets the same day off work. Given that most people in this country celebrate Presidents’ Day, not Cesar Chavez Day, CSUN’s calendar is just a little bit off.
In addition to the above-mentioned leaders, this “Presidents Day” holiday has been expanded to include honor to ALL the American presidents, regardless of political persuasion. And since this fine institution receives federal funding (approved by the president), it only seems consistent that the faculty, administration and students of Cal State Northridge acknowledge this day. I do hope that this scheduling error is corrected so that next year, we all will be able to reflect on this nation without whose leaders the world would not know the meaning of freedom and democracy.
Picking Fights with Libertarians
I enjoy Mark Kleiman’s blog, despite often disagreeing with it. But Mark does have an odd penchant for picking fights with libertarians even when we agree with him. This happened a year ago, on the subject of laws that allow health insurance companies to break their contracts (see my responses here and here, both reaching into topics we do disagree on). It happened again last month, when he skewered Bush’s risible moonbase proposal (see my response here). And now it’s happened again, in a post on the FDA’s decision on the morning-after pill. “Once again,” he writes, “we can expect a deafening silence from the libertarians, whose sincerity about personal liberty I keep doing my level best not to doubt.”
Weird. It’s true that libertarians haven’t said much on this specific issue, though some have – read this and this and this. But on the other hand, libertarians generally argue that the FDA should be either emasculated or abolished entirely; here's a page articles from Cato, and an entire website run by the Independent Institute. I’m pretty sure Mark would not support eliminating the FDA, but the point is that doing so would make the morning-after pill issue moot; as long as abortion remained legal for even the first three days of pregnancy, the morning-after pill would be readily available. (As an aside, I should point out that there are many pro-life libertarians, though I’m pretty sure they are in the minority.)
I’m guessing the bigger issue is that Mark wants to know why libertarians aren’t opposing Bush. But more and more, they are. I, for one, have stated my opposition to George Bush repeatedly on this site. Radley Balko has been so critical of George Bush that he had to declare a week off from Bush-bashing – a pledge that he’s been unable to keep. Indeed, Bush-bashing is a favorite activity on most every libertarian site I visit. From Cato, here is a scathing indictment of his fiscal performance, here's another, and here's another from two years ago, before it got popular; here is an article criticizing the civil liberties record of John Ashcroft, and here is page of links on civil liberties under the Bush administration. If the question is why libertarians aren’t flocking to the Democrats, Mark should know the answer to that one: it’s because the Democrats are awful, too, on almost every front, including civil liberties. Lest we forget, Democrats voted for the civil-liberties-violating Patriot Act, Democrats voted for the political-speech-restricting Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, Democrats voted for the nonpolitical-speech-restricting Child Online Protection Act, Democrats support hate speech laws, Democrats stand should-to-shoulder with Republican drug warriors. Even so, most libertarians I’ve spoken to are hoping a Democrat wins the next presidential election so that we can return to the glory days of gridlock.
UPDATE: In an update to his original post, Mark admits the silence has not been so deafening after all, posting a link to this post by libertarian Jacob Levy.
Sunday, February 15, 2004
Love Needs No License
I support gay marriage (at least until government gets out of the marriage business altogether), but this statement by one of California’s gay newlyweds gets it all wrong:
“Now we’re not second-class citizens; now we can have a loving relationship like every other married couple we know," [Nancy] Felixson said.Hey, you don’t need the state’s permission to have a loving relationship. That’s already legal. What’s at issue here is not love, but equal access to state-granted privileges like married tax status and medical power of attorney.
Friday, February 13, 2004
Random Enfranchisement
A passing comment by Brian Weatherson (on the topic of vote-counting in Florida) got me thinking – and we all know how dangerous that can be.
So we’re just going to trust the computers. Given how reliable we all know computers to be, this is about as democratic as selecting candidates by lots. (Just for the record, I think it’s an interesting theoretical question about how democratic that is. It’s how we pick juries after all, and they are often considered an important part of the democratic process.)Set aside selecting candidates by lots, and consider a somewhat different proposal: selecting voters by lots. Instead of allowing anyone who meets the formal criteria for voting to vote, why not take a random sample of registered voters (or people in the census) and designate them as the only people allowed to vote in a given election? If the sample were sufficiently large, it would represent the views of the overall population, within some margin of error (a sample of a mere 10,000 would generate a vanishingly small margin of error, if the sample were truly random). The people selected would have a stronger incentive to become informed and vote wisely than in the status quo, because each vote would stand a greater chance of actually making a difference. The chance would still be very small, of course – it must be small in order for the law of large numbers to kick in and support my prior claim about having a representative sample. But apparently feelings of civic duty interact with very small chances of making a difference; otherwise, non-voting would be even more common than it is. I surmise, therefore, that increasing the weight of one’s vote by two or three orders of magnitude would have a substantial impact on voting choices, even if the absolute likelihood were still tiny.
Aside from the benefits of motivating qualified voters to consider their votes more carefully, the proposed system would reduce the administrative costs of voting. We could invest a great deal more per voter in safeguarding against fraud and error and still save money. We’d need a mere fraction of the ballots, voting booths, and manpower to run the system. Plus, everyone else could stay at work instead of taking time off to vote.
Yeah, yeah, this is a pipe dream. It’ll never happen, which is why I don’t have to worry much about the possible downsides of my scheme. But I’m curious – what would the disadvantages be? The obvious one is that people whose name never got randomly chosen would feel disenfranchised (which, by some definition of the term, they would be). Yet everyone would have the same chance of being a voter, so there would be no formal violation of equal treatment principles. The communitarian objection would be that participation in the voting process is desirable in and of itself, as a device for making people feel connected to each other and their government. This argument is not terribly persuasive to me, since I’d prefer that people feel attached to voluntarily chosen communities instead of the state, but I can still understand the objection. What other objections are there?
Thursday, February 12, 2004
You Can't Stem the Stem-Cell Tide
This is fantastic news:
South Korean and U.S. researchers said Wednesday they had cloned a human embryo and extracted from it sought-after cells called embryonic stem cells. The cloning was not intended to make human babies, but the first step toward developing cures for diabetes, Parkinson's and other diseases, the researchers said.As anyone who's spoken to me on the subject will tell you, I am bullish on both cloning and stem-cell technologies. In the past, I’ve predicted that these technologies, separately or in concert, will substantially extend the human lifespan within the next 20 or 30 years (if not sooner). However, the political resistance to both types of research, exemplified by Bush’s limitations on the use of fetal stem cells and his desire to ban all human cloning, dampened my excitement somewhat. Today’s news reignites it. Even if political opposition slows down or stops the research in the US, it will assuredly occur elsewhere in the world. Note that while both Americans and South Koreans are credited, the actual experiments took place in South Korea.
The experiment, the first published report of cloned human stem cells, means so-called therapeutic cloning is no longer a theory but a reality. Supporters of medical cloning say it can transform medicine, offering tailored and highly effective treatments for diseases. They say it could eventually lead to grow-your-own organ transplants.
In casual conversation, some people have given me skeptical looks when I’ve suggested that stem-cell and cloning research are closely related and will eventually merge. Today’s news confirms my suspicions. The cloning process was used to create embryonic stem cells with genetic codes identical (or nearly identical) to those of adult human beings. Stem cells have the potential to grow into any form of human tissue. Thus, we may eventually be able to grow new human organs that are exact genetic matches for recipients, a development that could both alleviate the organ shortage and decrease the frequency of organ rejection.
Keep eating your Wheaties, folks. You don’t want to die before the fruit of this groundbreaking research ripens enough for general use!
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Conservatives in Academia
So why are conservatives underrepresented in academia? Kieran Healy argues that conservatives are on the horns of a dilemma: they must either (a) admit the existence of institutionalized inequality or (b) admit that conservatives just aren’t as smart as liberals.
C’mon now, isn’t there a more obvious explanation? No, I don’t mean Ezra Klein’s idea that smart conservatives are more likely than liberals to seek material gain in the private sector (though there may be something to that). I mean the fact that academia is almost entirely a non-profit enterprise, and it’s much easier for discrimination to survive without the discipline of profit and loss. In academia, there is no bottom line. Whether one gets tenure has much to do with the popularity of your ideas with the old guard in your profession. Like will tend to hire like, and as a result the same biases get duplicated year after year. The dominance of liberalism decades ago perpetuates itself to the present day. (Note that it’s much easier for non-liberal professors to survive in institutions with a long history of non-liberal viewpoints, such as the University of Chicago.)
There is a very weak market test for schools based on ideological balance, because students can choose to go to other colleges – but rare is the student who will reject a prestigious school because of the ideology of its professors. The smart but non-liberal student will attend the most prestigious school he can get into, and then tolerate the views of his professors for long enough to graduate. The lack of diversity across colleges in their ideological balance makes it very difficult to find an equivalent college with a substantially different ideological balance.
Another possible reason liberals dominate academia was suggested by Robert Nozick: intellectuals are, in general, people who appreciate thinking and planning, and they feel underappreciated. They tend to think society would just work better if all the dumb people would stand aside and let the smart people run things. As a result, they tend to be more hostile to arguments in favor of spontaneous, decentralized orders like the market.
One more thing: When complaining about the ideological balance in academia, conservatives are generally not asking for any special privileges. They aren’t demanding affirmative action for conservatives. Rather, they are drawing attention to the hypocrisy of liberals who champion the need for diversity of every variety (gender, race, economic background, etc.) except the kind of diversity that presumably matters most in an academic setting: diversity of opinion. Perversely, they even justify race- and class-based preferences on grounds of engendering more diversity of viewpoints. I’ve yet to hear a liberal advocate of diversity-based affirmative action advocate the recruitment of more non-liberals.
(BTW, I’m not a conservative. I’m a libertarian. Since libertarians are usually lumped together with conservatives in the studies of ideological diversity, I don’t know whether libertarians are over- or under-represented relative to their numbers in the population.)
You Can't Plan This Kind of Thing
This evening, I was explaining to a class of MBA students how above-normal profit in an industry tends to attract entry into the industry (unless there are significant barriers to entry). I asked the students for examples of industries that are currently making above-normal profits, and one student volunteered the pornography industry. “Yes,” I said, “and I imagine there’s a great deal of entry in porn!”
Monday, February 09, 2004
WTC Insurance Case
A federal court will soon decide whether the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center constituted one event or two. The answer matters because the insurance policy carried by the WTC’s owners specified payouts on a per-event basis. If 9/11 attack was one event, they will receive $3.5 million from the insurance companies; if it was two, they will receive $7 million.
There is no obvious right answer here. The biggest lesson, one that I emphasize to my law & economics students, is that no contract is ever complete. There will always be contingencies unforeseen by the parties and left unspecified in the contract, because it is costly to predict unusual events and insert clauses to deal with them, and there are diminishing returns to doing so. The parties to a contract rationally choose to leave some things for the courts to decide ex post, and that’s why the courts have to establish default rules.
Still, I’ll take a stab at finding the most correct answer. While the 9/11 attack was highly unusual, non-independent events are hardly unknown to contract law. Consider the damage done to your car by a hailstorm – would it be considered one event (a hailstorm) or many events (hailstone 1, hailstone 2, … , hailstone 100…)? I’m not an insurance lawyer, but I strongly suspect it’s the former. Similarly, if you have cancer, and the cancer leads to the need for two different procedures (an operation to remove a tumor, and a series of chemotherapy treatments), your insurance policy’s “per condition” cap presumably applies to the total from both, not each one individually. In each case, the probability of a second event, conditional on the other having occurred, is greater than zero. Given that my car got hit by one hailstone, there’s a greater chance than usual chance it will get hit by another. If I need to get a tumor removed, the chance of my also needing chemo is greater than if I hadn’t needed to get a tumor removed.
The general rule, then, is that when two events are not statistically independent, they are treated as one for insurance purposes. (I’m assuming positively related events; I choose to ignore cases in which one event reduces the likelihood of another.) In the present case, the two airplanes that hit the WTC were pretty clearly part of a coordinated attack, and thus not statistically independent. So I would probably side with the insurance companies, unless their contracts defined “event” in some novel way. The precedent established would be consistent with the general pattern I noted above.
Naturally, people writing insurance contracts would have the right to contract around the precedent by defining “event” in some more specific way (and adjusting premiums upward accordingly, since the liability created for the insurance company would be greater). The same would be true of the opposite precedent as well (with a downward adjustment of premiums). This is one of the great virtues of contract law – if you don’t like the court’s rules, you can typically write your own, with the consent of the other party, of course. But since the rule I advocate here seems congruent with current practice in less dramatic circumstances, I think it would not require as much rewriting of existing contract forms as would the alternative.
UPDATE: Just to be clear, I realize there’s some ambiguity in the rule I suggest here. Among other, we would have to ask what other factors should be taken as given before doing the calculation of statistical independence. For example, an elderly person might be more susceptible to a variety of illnesses; if we didn’t control for age, then a person with condition X might have a greater chance (than a randomly selected person) of also having condition Y, even though X and Y are not related. To deal with this and similar cases, my rule might have to be adjusted to some threshold higher than zero correlation. The implication for events like hailstorms and WTC attacks is still pretty clear, though.
Saturday, February 07, 2004
The Linguistic-Economic Interface
What is the appropriate response when someone says “Thank you”? Most Americans would answer, “You’re welcome.” And in most situations that is the expected reply. But in some circumstances, the appropriate response to “Thank you” is another “Thank you.” When? After people have concluded a commercial transaction. The salesperson says "Thank you," and I reply, "Thank you." And that makes perfect sense. When one person gives another a gift, the recipient has given up nothing, and thus deserves no thanks. But voluntary commercial exchanges are generally mutually beneficial. Both sides gain, and this symmetry makes it sensible to have both parties give the same expression of gratitude.
(Giving credit where it’s due: I heard someone make the same point a long time ago, but I honestly can’t remember who. I think it might have been Walter Williams.)
Can’t … resist … tasteless … joke …
Just came across this article with the headline, “Infant dies after surgery to remove second head.” I guess it just goes to show… Two heads really are better than one!
Friday, February 06, 2004
Snowclone Wars
J-P Stacey despises my word coinage, saying it’s “redolent of William Gibson and other ‘writors’” and sticks out like “a chart R&B song in my CD collection.” I decline to defend myself. Instead, I’ll defer to Mark Liberman’s response: “I'm just a bystander here, but if I were Glen Whitman, I'd be happy to be classed with William Gibson and chart R&B songs.” Well, I could do without the chart R&B songs, but William Gibson’s no slouch. He coined the word “cyberspace,” after all.
Thursday, February 05, 2004
Cutting-Edge Marketing Strategy
I heard this on the radio, but I can't find a source online. Dunkin Donuts plans to adopt a bold new marketing plan to compete with the likes of Starbucks. It will offer coffee and cappuccino at reduced prices, in sizes called "small," "medium," and "large."
This Is What Happens When You Have Group-Based Rights
The Pechanga Indian Tribe is trying to squeeze out some its members, saying their claim to Pechanga heritage is dubious. Of course, the remaining 90% of the tribe will get a larger share of the tribe's casino revenues.
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Thanks, Bro
Neal's two-week guest stint is over, but I'm sure he'll return sometime soon. I've enjoyed his contributions, and I hope y'all have as well.
Monday, February 02, 2004
Choice Comments
Tyler Cowen and Will Wilkinson both have interesting comments on the growing “choice makes people unhappy” literature. Both Tyler and Will point out that, if your choice set really is too large to sort through at low cost, then it pays to have people who will do the sorting for you – editors who select the best articles, waiters who tell you the best items on the menu, etc. I made the same point about a month ago. Will adds that the need for editors creates new entrepreneurial opportunities for those who can do the most effective job of helping others narrow their choice sets.
Although sometimes presented as evidence against the standard microeconomic theory of consumer behavior (and possibly all rational-choice theories), the “choice makes people unhappy” literature doesn’t really shake my confidence in economic modeling. It just changes my assessment of the relative importance of different economic models. The usual static choice model, in which a consumer just chooses the highest-utility point available in a completely known and well-defined choice set, has always been a simplification. For some contexts, it’s an innocuous simplification. In other contexts, particularly those with a greater informational burden, other models must be brought to bear, the most obvious being search theory (as Will indicates).
I’ve long thought that search theory deserves greater play than it gets at present. It’s been applied extensively in labor economics (for job search), but its use elsewhere is more limited. I’ve been working on a search theory of suicidal choice for a while now, and long-time readers may remember my search theory of romance. Search theory also provides the utility-maximizing explanation of satisficing. What I haven’t seen yet, but would very much like to see, is a thorough reworking of basic consumer theory along search theory lines. (Please email me if you know of anyone who’s working on this!)
Friday, January 30, 2004
Snarkumentaries
After the smashing success of my last word coinage, I’ve decided to coin another. You know those VH1 documentaries like “I Love the 80s” and “I Love the 70s,” which specialize in quirky nostalgia brought to you by comedians and B-list celebrities? I propose to call them “snarkumentaries.” I Googled it, and there was not a single hit (even with alternative spelling “snarcumentaries”), so I think I can claim full authorship.
The latest snarkumentary, by the way, is “The Best Week Ever,” which offers you the very latest in hot, fresh, up-to-the-minute nostalgia. Oh, and they have a blog.
Thursday, January 29, 2004
In Defense of Linguistic Prescriptivism
I've blogged on the subject of linguistic prescriptivism versus descriptivism before, so I wasn’t motivated to do so again until I saw Neal’s response to my Two Things post:
The Two Things about linguistics:Item 2 can be taken in a couple of different ways, one of which strikes me as obviously true, the other of which strikes me as (less obviously) false. The true interpretation is that change is not inherently good or bad; it is just an unavoidable fact. But the false interpretation, which seems pretty common among linguistic descriptivists, is that we cannot reasonably pass judgment on the changes; or more broadly, that we cannot judge some linguistic uses or constructions better than others. That conclusion is thoroughly unjustified. Language serves certain purposes (communication being chief among them), and some uses and constructions serve those purposes better than others.
1. You already know more about the grammar of your native language than could ever be taught in a class. (synchronic linguistics)
2. Language change is inevitable, and neither bad nor good. (diachronic linguistics)
Language is, of course, a spontaneous order, and its evolution lies beyond the control of any single person or organization. And that’s good, because I would not trust the judgment of any monopolistic entity empowered to control the language (as the French Academy attempts to do with French). Similarly, I favor free markets in large part because I distrust the centralized power of government. Moreover, decentralized orders like language and markets have a great capacity to respond quickly to the real needs of their users. But a general approval of decentralized orders does not imply approval of every specific outcome of such an order. For instance, one could consistently oppose the federal antitrust action against Microsoft while still rooting for some competitor in the OS market (like Apple or Linux) to undermine Microsoft’s dominant market position. One might even go so far as to boycott Microsoft products and encourage others to follow suit. Indeed, I know many libertarians who have done just that.
Similarly, one can recognize the evolutionary character of language while nonetheless resisting particular changes in language. For my part, I oppose linguistic constructions that I think erode logical clarity or valuable distinctions. For instance, the use of “I miss X” to mean both “I dislike no longer having or doing X” and “I regret” creates confusion (see Neal’s earlier post on this topic). If both meanings are valid, and someone says, “I miss not seeing Larry,” I can correctly interpret the statement only if I already know something about (a) how the speaker feels about Larry and (b) whether Larry is still present. Without such information, it’s possible that the speakers likes Larry and wishes he were here; but it’s also possible that the speaker dislikes Larry and is annoyed that he came back!
I don’t mean to claim that the original, unaltered language never has logical ambiguities. It does, and I welcome changes that help to eliminate the especially confusing ones. Simultaneously, I resist changes that create new ones. As I am only one user of the language, I have no illusions: the language will do what it will do, and I’m mostly helpless to resist it. Still, individuals do sometimes make a difference. Teachers and journalists, in particular, are in a position to have a disproportionate influence on the evolution of the language. I contend that teachers and journalists have a special obligation to think about the utility and disutility of changes in the language, rather than throwing up their hands and saying change is neither good nor bad.
One more caveat on a post that’s already too long: I also support the rejection of pointless rules of grammar that (a) do not serve any useful purpose such as avoiding logical ambiguity and (b) were made up by grammarians enamored of Greek and Latin. Neal tells me, for instance, that the prohibition on split infinitives (“to boldly go”) was not an indigenous part of the English language, but the creation of grammarians who observed that it was literally impossible to split infinitives in Latin (where an infinitive is a single word). Linguistic prescriptivism can certainly go too far, as Eugene has emphasized repeatedly on his blog. But there is nothing wrong with a modest dose of prescriptivism administered by thoughtful users of the language.
Monday, January 26, 2004
Hey Buddy, Can Ya Spare a Two-Buck-Fifty?
Last night I had a dream about the new paper currency -- you know, the souped-up bills with enlarged portraits, water colors, ghost images, and so on. The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) had finally gotten around to releasing the new version of the $2 bill. And apparently they decided that as long as they were changing its look, they might as well change its denomination as well, so they turned it into a $2.50 bill. In my sleep, I thought this made sense because $10 is half of $20, $5 is half of $10, and $2.50 is half of $5. ($20 is not half of $50, and $1 is half of $2, not $2.50; but I guess my sleeping brain didn’t make it quite that far.)
Oddly, the BEP had also altered Thomas Jefferson’s portrait by giving him creepily piercing eyes with white pupils.
Sunday, January 25, 2004
The Two Things
I’ve been meaning to blog about the Two Things for a while now, but someone has beaten me to the punch. Todd Grotenhuis, a participant at a seminar I spoke at last summer, discusses it here.
Here’s the story of the Two Things. About three years ago, I was chatting with a stranger in a bar. When I told him I was an economist, he said, “Ah. So… what are the Two Things about economics?”
“Huh?” I cleverly replied.
“You know, the Two Things. For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay, here are the Two Things about economics. One: Incentives matter. Two: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
Ever since that evening, I’ve been playing the Two Things game. When I meet someone who belongs to a different profession (i.e., a profession I haven’t played this game with), I pose the Two Things question. Among other things, I have found out the following:
The Two Things about Law (from Melanie Williams):Todd adds the following:
1. You are responsible for the foreseeable costs of your wrongful conduct.
2. Law protects the reasonable expectations of the parties.
The Two Things about Managerial Accounting (from Shahid Ansari):
1. The “cost” of any item depends on what you need the information for.
2. Since managerial accounting information is used for decision-making, it should be relevant rather than verifiable.
The Two Things about Hairdressing (from Damasque):
1. Texture
2. Balance
The Two Things about Civil Engineering:At the aforementioned seminar, some participants asked me to tell them the Two Things about Women, and I came up with the following:
1. Dirt + Water = Mud.
2. You can’t push a rope.
1. When complaining, they don’t want your advice, they want your sympathy.Marc LeBar, a philosopher and fellow faculty member, said the first thing about philosophy was “It’s not the answers, it’s the questions.” I don’t recall his ever stating the second thing.
2. Don’t you dare tell them you can sum them up with just Two Things.
Please let me know, via email or the comments box, the Two Things about your own field (or the correct Two Things about any of the fields already covered). I plan to create a webpage with all the best answers, with credit to the authors.
Saturday, January 24, 2004
The Only Imaginable Reason to Vote Republican
Gene Healy nails it:
I've been preoccupied lately with trying to figure out why anyone who supports limited government would support George W. Bush and the G.O.P., particularly after that State of the Union speech … The other reason, I guess, is the supposed lack of viable alternatives. I think about that scene from Officer and a Gentleman … Louis Gossett Jr. is beating the piss out of Richard Gere, and Gossett screams "Why you wanna be a Marine, Mayonaisse?" And Gere, doubled over, snot and blood dripping from his nose, screams back: "CAUSE I GOT NOWHERE ELSE TA GO!! [sob] I got nowhere else ta go..."No matter how you slice it, the principle of limited government takes a beating.
Friday, January 23, 2004
Broken Windows on the Moon
Andrew Chamberlain debunks the idea that we ought to credit NASA with the invention of Velcro, Teflon, Tang, Dust Busters, calculators, ad infinitum (thanks to Radley for the pointer). Andrew makes a number of excellent points (with great links, too), but I have to mention explicitly the one Andrew only hinted at: counting these ancillary and sometimes accidental inventions among NASA’s benefits is another variant of the old broken-window fallacy.
If Congress had not allocated all that money to NASA, then either (a) Congress would have allocated it in other ways, or (b) it would have been left in the private sector, where it would have been spent or invested. Either way, it would have stimulated other sectors of the economy. The activity that would have resulted in those other sectors is “what is not seen,” as Fredric Bastiat would have said: it is the invisible cost of the NASA budget. Those other sectors might also have produced a variety of both intentional and accidental inventions. We will never know what advances might have been made in other realms of human endeavor.
Inasmuch as NASA does pioneering research, one could argue that NASA is more likely than other programs to produce spillover benefits. But, as Andrew astutely points out, spillover benefits can result from all kinds of research, not just space exploration, so the claim of spillover benefits is hardly unique to NASA. And accidental discoveries can be made just about anywhere. In any case, the existence of spillover benefits doesn’t erase the costs. To get all those benefits, we had to sacrifice potential gains, of both the novel and mundane variety, elsewhere in the economy. It’s conceivable that NASA produced value on net, but we have to consider the hidden costs to make that calculation; and because those costs are in terms of things that never happened, we can’t ever know for sure. The next time you hear a laundry list of inventions that “would never have happened” if not for NASA, at least give a thought to all the other potential inventions that might have happened if not for NASA.
Thursday, January 22, 2004
My Miss-understanding
A Jan. 21 posting by Chris Potts on LanguageLog discusses negated sentences that mean the same thing as their non-negated counterparts, the most well-known probably being this pair:
(1) (a) I couldn’t care less. / (b) I could care less.
This reminds me of another not-to-be-taken-literally negation that I first heard from my wife. She said:
(2) I miss not seeing her.
I had to take a few seconds to figure out what she meant. “So… you used to not see her … but now you do see her … and you wish you didn’t have to?” I asked. No, it turns out I could have saved the mental energy of figuring out the compositional semantics and just jumped straight to the pragmatically sensible meaning. She meant what I would have said like this:
(3) I miss seeing her.
I did a search for miss not on the Internet and found too many examples to include here, as well as a discussion of this idiom here.
Now Chris says cases like these challenge the theory of natural-language negation, since a negated sentence really ought to mean the opposite of an un-negated one. But I wonder. Looking at the couldn’t care less example, it may just be that speakers who use (1b) have a single definition for the whole phrase could care less—in other words, could_care_less = don’t care. And they could even still have the ordinary, compositional meaning for could care less, and would just have to use it with the appropriate intonation to distinguish it from the idiomatic could_care_less. As in, "I COULD care less about your well-being, like so many other parents seem to do with their kids -- but I DON'T care less!"
Coming back to the miss not seeing cases, we could just say that for people who use this construction, miss simply means “regret” (an idea mentioned in the above website). And what if there are speakers who can say either (2) or (3) equally well? OK, so for them, there are two homonyms, each pronounced as “miss,” one taking a gerund phrase and meaning “dislike not being able to do something that one previously could do,” and the other taking a negated gerund phrase and meaning “regret.”
The real test of this hypothesis would be finding out if there are speakers who can do something like this:
(4) I miss seeing you and not doing all the things we used to do.
Can this mean “I miss seeing you and I regret that we don't do all the things we used to do”? If you could say this or hear it with the above meaning, I’d like to hear from you!
Meatbull!
When my son got interested in dinosaurs, I began to learn about all the dinosaurs that had been discovered since I read about them as a kid. One of them is a meat-eater from South America, with a snub-nosed face and two short horns above its eyes. These features reminded the dinosaur’s discoverer of a bull, so he named it Carnotaurus (yes, that’s –taurus, not –saurus), which most of the dinosaur books I’ve seen translate as “meat-eating bull.” Now that’s just not right. The Carno- part means “meat,” and the taurus part means “bull,” but where’s the “eat” part? Carnotaurus doesn’t mean “meat-eating bull”; it means “meatbull”!
But wait, you say. “Meatbull” doesn’t make any sense. That’s right. “Meat-EATING bull” makes much more sense, but dammit, just because “meatbull” doesn’t make any sense doesn’t mean you can just go adding whatever meaning you think should go in there! For example, think about the Jurassic plant-eater Brachiosaurus, whose name means “arm-lizard.” Arm-lizard? What’s an arm-lizard? Well, if Carnotaurus means “meat-EATING bull,” then maybe Brachiosaurus means “arm-BREAKING lizard.” After all, “arm-BREAKING lizard” makes a lot of sense if you imagine a big old Brachiosaurus stomping down on an unfortunate allosaur. For that matter, who says we have to insert a meaning that makes sense? Brachiosaurus could just as easily mean “arm-EATING lizard,” or “arm-DRINKING lizard,” or “arm-PAINTING lizard.” Actually, “arm-lizard” does make sense once you find out that the people who named it were referring to the fact that its front legs (i.e. arms) were longer than its rear legs, which is unusual for a dinosaur. But in that case, why hasn’t Brachiosaurus been translated as “arms-LONGER-THAN-LEGS lizard” for all these years?
So paleontologists have a couple of options. They can say that Carnotaurus means “meat-bull,” and that a meatbull is a bull that eats meat. Or they can name the dinosaur something like Carnivorotaurus, and say that that means “meat-eating bull.” But they can’t name it Carnotaurus and say that its name means “meat-eating bull.” Alas, as R. Crumb, might put it, Meatbull doesn’t work that way!
Sex Selection
This article by Kathleen Parker, in which she argues against the use of genetic sex selection, is a miracle of poor reasoning. It’s the kind of article that’s almost anti-persuasive: if these are the best arguments they can muster against sex selection, then it must be okay. I can’t resist giving it a brisk fisking.
Just because we can, should we? And who should decide? Is this yet another place government doesn't belong? If not a matter for government oversight, then who should decide what we do with human life in all its permutations - pre-born, test-tubed, sperm-selected and ova-donated.Ooh, um, I don’t know… parents, maybe? Odd how that option didn’t even make the list.
Priests, rabbis and imams? A jury of one's peers? Bioethicists?
Family planning no longer means counting moon phases.This is news? Family planning hasn’t meant counting moon phases since the invention of the pill.
Increasingly, it's a matter of mapping gender and genes. Already some specialty sperm and egg banks offer "Ivy League" donors; hundreds of couples have signed up for sex-selection trials.In this context, “already” means “for over 30 years, since sperm banks first appeared.” Sperm banks have always kept track of the characteristics of their donors, so that sperm shoppers could choose the sort of father they wanted. So far, it hasn’t been a problem.
What's the big deal about identifying sex, proponents ask? If a family has three boys and wants a girl, why shouldn't they have the option to choose? Questions far outnumber answers thus far, which may be an answer in itself.That’s right, more questions constitutes an answer. From now on, if you want to ban something, you don’t actually have to demonstrate a harm – you just have to ask a bunch of questions.
Some pragmatists worry that sex selection could become a new form of sex discrimination. Or that we might upset the balance of nature by fooling with the ratio of boys to girls, as occurred in China when families limited to one child aborted females.This is, in my mind, the only serious objection to sex selection. But the fact that it happened in China – which (a) has a long cultural history of strongly preferring boys to girls, (b) still has many regions dominated by agriculture, which favors having children who can work the fields, and (c) has a state policy limiting parents to a single child each – doesn’t mean that it will happen here. And even if it does, the problem might be self-correcting; see my previous post on this subject.
Sex selection also adds a prickly new dimension to the abortion issue. If you order a girl and mistakenly get a boy, do you abort the "wrong sex"? Of course, you certainly may, and some have. Wrong sex, wrong time, wrong mood. Getting born these days is a tricky proposition.The reasoning here is exactly backward. People who care that much about getting a baby of the right sex can abort wrong-sexed fetuses under the status quo, with no help from sex selection technology. I doubt such abortions are common, but more importantly, the availability of sex selection will reduce their frequency, not increase it. Parents who really, really want a boy can make 99.99% sure they get one in the first place, rather than aborting two or three girls first.
Here's at least one question I haven't heard asked: When did it become accepted wisdom that people should always get exactly what they want? Since when are perfect outcomes the standard by which we measure quality of life?Strange that she hasn’t heard anyone ask that question, since statists ask it on a regular basis, as though it were actually an argument or something. It’s not. We all know it’s impossible for everyone to get exactly what they want. But when we can improve some people’s happiness without substantially burdening others’, only pointless self-denial would prevent us from doing so. If improving people’s ability to come closer to getting what they want is a bad thing, then we need to rethink a lot of other technological advances – like condoms, for instance, which have been around at least since the time of Caesar.
In every case, I suspect, a degree of narcissism creeps into the romantic equation that results in our little darlings. Father wants a son just like Dad; Mother wants a daughter just like Mom.If true, this claim mitigates the alleged sex-ratio problem. At least in cases where both Mom and Dad are involved in the decision, the two sources of narcissism cancel each other out (to some degree, at least).
Besides which, life without surprises – and the kind of spontaneity that sometimes results in an unplanned pregnancy – would be intolerably boring.So should we ban birth control to encourage more of those fun “surprise” pregnancies? Look, if you want a surprise, you can still have one – it’s not like trying to tickle yourself! If you want your child’s sex to be a surprise, don’t use sex selection! For decades now, parents have had the ability to find out their child’s sex before birth; many have chosen to do so, but others have not. (Neal and his wife chose a clever halfway house, because he wanted to know but she didn’t. Neal found out the baby’s sex and then agreed to switch pronouns from week to week – “he” this week, “she” next week – so his wife wouldn’t be tipped off. If he ever slipped, the error could be written off to forgetting what week it was.)
Perhaps there are some risks to sex selection, but I haven’t heard a truly persuasive one yet. Articles like this one just reinforce my suspicion that opposition to sex selection stems from squeamishness and little else.
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Schadenfreude
That’s the feeling this article inspires in me. An Ohio woman just won $162 million (well, $67 million actually, because she took the lump-sum payment) in the lottery. The local government officials were almost as excited as she was – after all, they figured they had just gotten a windfall of unexpected tax revenues! But it was not to be, because the city had neglected to include lottery winnings in the definition of income.
"It's not a good day for the city," Mayor Georgine Welo said Monday. "We were all excited until we went to go for the money and learned that we are not entitled to it. We are very saddened by the news."Yeah, I’ll bet. It’s enough to make you weep – from laughing so hard. Hey, how about this: the city should take $2 of tax revenue and buy a lottery ticket for itself next week.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Alternative Programming
As Julian notes, the State of the Union Address is like the Super Bowl for political geeks. But as a political geek myself, I still don’t get it. The SotU is invariably a lethal mix of boring, stupid, mawkish, and frustrating. The endless ovations only add to the torture. And if you really feel like you’re missing something, you can skim the full transcript (minus ovations) in the morning paper. Here’s a hint: if the only good reason to watch something is the drinking game, then find something else to watch. There are plenty of better options, and they, too, often have drinking games. Hey, I’m not saying MTV’s Taildaters/Punk’d line-up is sophisticated television, but consider the alternative. As for me, I think I’ll be watching Firefly on DVD.
Braves versus Thinskins
Christopher Potz’s recent post on offensive team names reminds of something I’ve been meaning to say on the subject. Activist groups pushing for the elimination of team names like Redskins, Indians, and Braves have made a strategic error that likely damages their case in the eyes of the public: they refuse to distinguish between derogatory and non-derogatory references to American Indians. “Redskins” is clearly offensive to anyone who gives it much thought; but “Indians” is pretty neutral, and “Braves” is arguably complimentary. As long as activist groups insist on the elimination of all these names, the public is likely to ignore them. Given an all-or-nothing choice, they prefer all to nothing. The mere fact that a team name makes reference to an ethnic group, or to that group’s warrior class, does not indicate racism; if it did, then activists would be equally upset over the Patriots, Minutemen, and Vikings. If the activists hope to make a difference, they need to adopt a more moderate stance favoring the elimination of only the truly offensive names.
(PETA has made a similar error in its advocacy of animal rights. Many Americans might favor marginal changes that improve the condition of food animals on factory farms and research animals in labs. But they are not willing to go vegetarian, forgo the health and safety gains from research, and rename the Green Bay Packers because its name is a reference to the meat-packing industry.)
Monday, January 19, 2004
The Nature Con...servancy
These two articles spell bad news for free-market environmentalists. For many years, I had considered the Nature Conservancy a fine example of how environmental goals could be sought by private means rather than government coercion. Unfortunately, it turns out the Conservancy is most likely guilty of various forms of malfeasance and unethical behavior. It also turns out, according to this report, that the Conservancy wasn’t that market-friendly, either: it received much government funding, and it frequently sold properties to the government despite the express wishes of those who sold or donated them to the Conservancy in the first place.
Of course, it’s good news that a seemingly corrupt and (as it turns out) anti-market organization will likely be brought to justice. But it’s bad news that what appeared to be a noble organization is not so noble after all.
Moreover, some of the organization’s laudable practices may be tarred with the same brush as its unsavory ones. For instance, both articles imply that it’s somehow unethical for the Conservancy to have engaged in “conservation buyer” sales and to have allowed for some development and resource extraction on its preserves.
[Earlier Washington Post] stories also reported that the Conservancy had repeatedly bought land, added some development restrictions, then resold the properties at reduced prices to its trustees and other supporters. The buyers made cash gifts to the Conservancy roughly equal to the difference in price, thereby qualifying for substantial tax deductions. [excerpt from first linked article above]Although the sale of properties to the organization’s own trustees undoubtedly smells corrupt, there is nothing inherently wrong with the general approach described here The notion that land must remain pristine in order to achieve environmental goals is a myth perpetuated by other environmental groups. In reality, it’s possible to use land for various purposes with only negligible harm to the environment, as long as suitable development restrictions are in place. Even better, the proceeds from resource extractions can generate funds which can be used to preserve yet more sensitive properties from development. This strategy, which is both economically sensible and environmentally sound, may suffer unjustly as a result of the Nature Conservancy’s unethical actions. (Thanks to Tyler Cowen for the pointer.)
[The Nature Conservancy has now] [s]uspended all new logging and other "resource extraction activities" on its nature preserves. The Post articles detailed how in Texas City, Tex., the organization had drilled for oil and natural gas under the last native breeding ground of a highly endangered species of grouse known as the Attwater's prairie chicken. The suspension will not stop natural gas production on the Texas preserve, a spokesman said. [excerpt from second linked article above]
Stuck in a Syntactic Puzzle You Can't Get Out Of
That's the clever post title I thought Neal should've used for his post below, and now I have a chance to use it, because Dad emailed me the following message that he was unable to post in the comments box:
Neal calls this kind of situation an "attachment ambiguity." No doubt that is the correct linguistics term, but I call it bad diction, good diction being defined as a skillful choice of words accurately used to express clearly the speaker's ideas.Here are my answers, even though the questions were for Neal. With regard to the intentional misdirection ("I want to kiss her, but..."), I think the technical linguistic term is "pun." "BTW" is Internet shorthand for "by the way." And Sting was the lead singer of the Police, so I think Neal deliberately used both names.
Our society generally forgives a modicum of bad diction or bad grammar on the part of singers and songwriters, because it is often necessary to make the timing and tempo (or the rhyming) of the lyrics fit with the melody ("poetic license"). This is not surprising, since frequently (if not the majority of the time) the music is written before the lyrics are. In fact, it is not uncommon that different people write the music and the lyrics. My impression is that this is especially true with musicals.
Were it not for the absurdity of the "call her up a thousand times" scenario, that would be exactly what I would think was meant, just as Ellen did, because of the sentence structure. Consider the following:
"I resolve to call her up a thousand times a day" has the same structure as, "I resolve to call her every week." Now, having removed the outlandish aspect (a thousand calls per day) from the problem, it is clear that what the speaker means to say is that he intends to call her every week (whether he actually gets around to it is another matter).
If, instead, the speaker said, "Every week I resolve to call her," it is equally clear that every week he resolves all over again to call her (but apparently he can't ever work up the nerve to actually do so).
While on the subject of misleading song lyrics, Neal, what is the proper linguistics term for the kind of intentional misdirection embodied in the song line that goes, "I want to kiss her, but .... pause .... she won't let me," meaning that he wants to kiss her (except she won't let him), although what the singer wants the listener to hear is that he (the singer) wants to kiss her butt.
Also, what does BTW mean? And did you mean to say Police both times or Sting both times?
Sunday, January 18, 2004
Foundering on a syntactic puzzle
Thanks, Glen, for the introduction. And now, I'll get right to some linguistic stuff.
In a recent post on LanguageLog, Geoff Pullum spoke of “founder[ing] on [a] semantic puzzle”. I’ve known this feeling when it comes to syntax, and particularly in song lyrics. I’ve always had a tendency (which I’ve gradually learned is not a normal one) to take things literally, and end up chuckling over lines like this one:
(1) Your prison is walking through this world all alone. (“Desperado,” by the Eagles)
But one song lyric in particular had me foundering on a syntactic puzzle. Back in high school, I’d hear this line from the Police on the radio:
(2) I resolve to call her up a thousand times a day… (“Every Little Thing She Does is Magic”)
And I’d wonder: Which is it? Does he make a resolution a thousand times a day? Or does he make one resolution, namely, that he will call her up a thousand times a day? Well, gosh, she’d get pretty annoyed if he called a thousand times a day, so it’s probably the resolving that he does a thousand times a day. Yeah, that’s probably it. But even after making my determination, the next time I’d hear the song, I’d go through the train of thought all over again. It was weeks before I was able to hear how the rest of the verse went, because about 5 seconds would always have elapsed before I turned my attention back to the song. (It goes, “ask her if she’ll marry me,” something something something). Much later I learned that there was a name for this kind of situation: an attachment ambiguity. Does “a thousand times a day” attach to the lower verb phrase “call her up”, or to the larger verb phrase “resolve to call her up”?
BTW, for those who think the “call her up a thousand times” scenario is so outlandish that no one could possibly think that was what Sting meant, that was exactly what my sister thought he meant until I opened her eyes to the more likely meaning!
Changing of the Guard
I have two announcements. First, I am pleased to announce that my brother Neal Whitman will be guest-blogging on Agoraphilia for the next couple of weeks. Neal earned his doctorate in linguistics from Ohio State University in 2002, and he has articles published or forthcoming in The Journal of Linguistics and Language. Rather than offering a description of his political ideology, as seems traditional on mostly political blogs like this one, I will instead state his linguistic ideology: he is a semanticist with syntactic leanings. (That's supposed to be a little joke. If it's not funny, blame me, not Neal.) I look forward to his posts on language and whatever else he feels like venting about.
Second, Agoraphilia bids fond farewell to gadfly Jim Dow. He's not dead or anything; he's just decided blogging's not really his bag. He'll no longer be a regular co-blogger, but hopefully he will guest blog at some point in the future.