Democracy, schmemocracy. If we really wanted to do the Iraqi people a favor, we would do this. Read the whole thing.
Saturday, November 08, 2003
Friday, November 07, 2003
Exploited by Subsidies
On Monday, the CSUN Economics Association and the CSUN Associated Students (i.e., student government association) had a public debate on the subject of the recent tuition increase. Up until recently, CSU students had paid about $1500 per semester in tuition, but recently the tuition was hiked to about $2000 in light of the state’s budget troubles. Naturally, this angered a lot of students, and only students from the Econ Association were willing to defend it.
My intention here is not to disparage any of the participants, because all of them did a credible job of defending their positions, especially once you handicap them for their lack of experience (only one student was a seasoned debater). But when it came to the substance of the debate, I could hardly listen to the AS students without wincing at their raw sense of entitlement. As far as they – and apparently many students in the audience – were concerned, they were owed an education by the state, regardless of the cost. Both AS speakers threw out the word “exploitation” repeatedly as a description of the fee increase.
The CSU system costs more than $6000 per student per year to run. And that’s considering only variable costs for the present year; if you include capital costs, the figure rises to as much as $10,000 per student per year. During the Q&A period, I pointed out that taxpayers were giving CSU students a big fat present of at least $6000 a year, and I asked the lead AS speaker to explain by what logic that made her “exploited.” Her response was essentially, “I don’t think of it that way. I think exploitation is out there, and I’m just getting what I deserve back from the system.” (I’m paraphrasing, but that was definitely the gist.) When I asked how low the price would have to be in order for her not to be exploited, she and her partner said that $0 sounded reasonable to them. Much of the audience appeared to agree.
This attitude of entitlement is, I think, one of the best arguments against state subsidization of higher education or anything else. Once people start receiving handouts from the state, they begin to think of the handout as their property. If public university students were actually grateful for the gifts they receive, I would feel happier about the system. But if the attitudes expressed at Monday’s debate are any sign, they are not grateful – they are indignant that the gifts are not even more munificent. It was enough to make me shudder.
But I’ll give the AS students this much: at least they realize the state is spending money on them. Many students apparently do not. One department chair in the business school told me that many students try to justify dropping their classes by saying, “I paid for the class, why can’t I drop it?” The problem, of course, is that they didn’t pay for it; the taxpayers did. When students register for classes and drop them later, they waste resources and deprive other students of the opportunities they could have provided. And for every student who registers and then tries to drop, there are three others (a conservative estimate) who register but make no effort to gain anything from the course. They just show up (sometimes) and expect to get a grade, typically an A or B, whether or not they actually learn anything. And therein lies the problem: people often fail to appreciate what they don’t have to pay for.
(For more on the cost of higher education to taxpayers, read this op-ed by Neal McCluskey of Cato.)
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
The Devil in the Details
Chris Bertram of Crooked Timber poses the following little gem of a thought problem:
You are in hell and facing an eternity of torment, but the devil offers you a way out, which you can take once and only once at any time from now on. Today, if you ask him to, the devil will toss a fair coin once and if it comes up heads you are free (but if tails then you face eternal torment with no possibility of reprieve). You don’t have to play today, though, because tomorrow the devil will make the deal slightly more favourable to you (and you know this): he’ll toss the coin twice but just one head will free you. The day after, the offer will improve further: 3 tosses with just one head needed. And so on (4 tosses, 5 tosses, ….1000 tosses …) for the rest of time if needed. So, given that the devil will give you better odds on every day after this one, but that you want to escape from hell some time, when should accept his offer?I briefly thought this problem was going to be a paradox with no answer. But then I proved to myself that there is, in fact, a definite answer, so long as one discounts the future relative to the present, as human beings generally do. (More on that below.)
Suppose that d is your one-day discount rate, which tells you how much you value utility tomorrow relative to utility today. E.g., if d = 0.95, then tomorrow’s happiness is worth 95% of today’s happiness, from today’s perspective. Then if the following condition holds, you should take the bet on day N rather than waiting one more day:
(0.5)^N < (1 – d)/(1 – 0.5d)(Here's the proof, if you really want it.) For instance, if d = .95, then the right-hand side of the condition is 0.095. On day 1, the left-hand side is 0.5, which is greater than 0.095, so you wait. On day 2, the left-hand side is 0.25, which is greater than 0.095, so you still wait. On day 3, the left-hand side is 0.125, so you still wait. But on day 4, the left-hand side is 0.0625, which is less than 0.095. Therefore, you should take the bet on the fourth day.
The more you value the future, the longer you should wait. If d = 0.99, then you should wait until day 6. If d = 0.999, you should wait until day 9. If d = 0.9999, you should wait until day 13.
Tyler Cowen, admitting he hasn’t gone through the math, guesses that you’d wait a very, very long (possibly infinite) time. But as you can see from the above, even if your valuation of the future is extremely close (0.9999) to your valuation of the present, you’d still take the bet within a couple of weeks. One of the commenters on Chris Bertram’s original post says, “The rational answer to this question is obviously that it depends on your discount factor, your relative utility for being in hell or not, and the extent to which you trust the devil.” But it turns out that your relative utility for being in hell or not – i.e., the disutility of torment – actually doesn’t matter. (I was surprised by this; the parameter representing how bad hell is canceled out of my calculations.)
There is a way to squeeze a paradox into the problem. If you do not discount the future at all relative to the present, then the condition above never holds, meaning you’d stay in hell forever. This outcome is mentioned by a couple of Chris’s commenters, and one notes that this is allegedly a paradox of rational choice: “The punch line was that if you were completely rational in the economic sense of the term – maximizing your expected utility – you’d spend forever in hell.” But it seems to me that this is not really a paradox brought on by rational choice, but by the general weirdness of infinity. In the calculations that produce the condition above, you have to divide by (1 – d) at some point, which means dividing by zero if you don’t discount the future. So you can’t really use the condition above. When you look at the original comparisons that led to the condition, it turns out that you get infinite terms on both sides, meaning that you’re indifferent between taking the bet and waiting at any point in time. This happens because no matter what you do, there’s a chance you’ll be in hell forever, and that’s an infinite amount of suffering. The probabilities don’t matter, because anything times infinity is still infinity. In any case, the correct conclusion is not that the rational non-discounter must remain in hell forever, but that he’s indifferent between doing so and taking the bet.
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Swimming with Sharks
This is truly a tragic story:
The water was clear and there was no indication of danger when a 13-year-old surfing star went out on the waves with her best friend and her friend's father.Gruesome. But take heart: if they find that shark, I'll bet they sue the hell out of it.
But while Bethany Hamilton was lying on her board off Kauai's North Shore, a shark bit once and then disappeared, taking off her left arm just below the shoulder.
Monday, November 03, 2003
Explain This to Me
A hectic schedule and blogger’s block joined forces to make me neglect Agoraphilia for most of the last week. But a number of things have yanked my chain in the last couple of days, so the block has vanished.
For now, I’ll limit myself to a minor TV-related complaint. I understand the value of broadcasting movies in the widescreen format. The usual pan-and-scan format cuts off the edges of the picture, and I would rather tolerate the black strips on the top and bottom of the TV screen in order to see everything I would have seen in the theater.
But can anyone explain to me why some TV shows are broadcast in widescreen format? “Angel” is regularly filmed in widescreen, and some other shows like “ER” run special episodes in widescreen. They even advertise this like it’s a benefit, as though the viewer is getting something extra. But in fact, the viewer is getting less. These shows are not originally filmed for the big screen. The directors could choose to film them in a way that fills the whole TV screen. Instead, they give us big black strips without any compensating gain. What a gyp!
Monday, October 27, 2003
Smoke Signals
I was supposed to have office hours from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. this afternoon. But by around 4:00 p.m., my office had started to smell like a backyard barbecue. No kidding – my eyes were actually starting to smart. I decided to cancel office hours and get out of dodge. About a half hour later, the university president canceled evening classes. (I don’t think that the university buildings are actually threatened by the fires, but the smoky air just isn’t healthy for breathing.)
Thursday, October 23, 2003
Levy Me Alone List
A reader pointed me to this article on the Do Not Call list by Bob Levy of the Cato Institute, suggesting that it might change my mind on the subject. Cato is noble organization, of course, and it has many fine people on its staff, Levy among them. But I think his logic in the article is strained, as has been the logic of other libertarian DNC-opponents.
Just to be clear about my own position: (1) I think the DNC list is consistent with libertarian principles, but not required by them. Other mechanisms, including some private ones, might be superior. (2) I also think that a federal DNC list is acceptable under federalist principles, because interstate commerce is clearly involved. The Constitution’s commerce clause has been much abused, but I don’t think the DNC is such an abuse. (3) I think that if we have a DNC list, it should not exempt political and charitable callers. There should either be one list with all types of telemarketers, or more than one list so the phone-owner can choose. That said, I think some protection is better than no protection, so even the list-with-a-loophole would be acceptable.
And now for a friendly fisking of Levy’s article. I say friendly because, again, I respect Levy and usually agree with him. (Note: this is not a complete fisking, because I am leaving out some passages of the article.)
But constitutional rights cannot be overridden by temporal majorities – not 51 percent of the people or even 91 percent of the people. And the court has the final word when it comes to the Constitution. A federal judge in Denver already has held that no-call prohibitions on telemarketers – with exemptions for calls that are arguably more intrusive, like those from charities, polling organizations, and (you guessed it) politicians – violate the First Amendment. Speech may not be suppressed based on its content, said the judge.So the judge’s decision was based on the differential treatment of two different types of call. That means, presumably, that a no-loophole DNC list would fit the bill. Thus, it’s overreaching to say that a DNC list is in principle a violation of constitutional freedom of speech as interpreted by the courts. Yet that is the clear implication of the article: that the DNC list should be scrapped, not amended to close the loophole.
But stepping away from current constitutional interpretation, let’s take this from the libertarian standpoint. Speech rights are ultimately property rights; you don’t have a right to give a speech on my front lawn if I don’t want you to. Telemarketers don’t have a right to ring your telephone if you’ve given them advance warning not to. Seen from this standpoint, allowing political and charitable callers to continue calling you over your clear objections means allowing them to violate your rights. In other words, the discriminatory DNC protects you against some property violations, while allowing others to continue. It’s pretty bizarre to hear a libertarian arguing that the ability of some people to violate your rights justifies allowing others to violate your rights as well!
[T]he Court's distinction between commercial and non-commercial speech has never been coherent. When someone advertises a political book, promotes a paid political event, or markets merchandise in support of a political cause, the commercial and political implications are inextricably entwined. It's time for an overhaul of the Supreme Court's commercial speech doctrine. Our Constitution protects Klan speech, flag burning, even "gangsta" rap. Surely the right of companies to provide information about their products is no less worth protecting.On this point, Levy and I agree. But just as Klansmen don’t have a right to ring your doorbell repeatedly after you’ve told them to get off your property, telemarketers don’t have a right to ring your phone repeatedly after you’ve told them to stop.
No-call may be a great idea – but only if the arrangements are controlled by private contract and not by government regulation. A phone customer does not own the lines coming into his home, so he may not restrict their use.This would be a plausible argument if the phone company had required me to agree, in my terms of service, to allow calls from telemarketers. But I have signed no such agreement, nor did the phone company ask me to. Similarly, my landlord didn’t include a term in my apartment lease forbidding me from putting a “no soliciting” sign on my door. In both cases, I am the renter of someone else’s asset (apartment or phone lines), and so long as my rental agreement doesn’t say otherwise, I can decide how the asset will be used.
Besides, I don’t need the phone lines to make my argument. To make a completed call into my home, telemarketers need to use both the phone lines and my phone. I own my phone, and therefore I can say who can access it.
Once a call enters his house, the customer has a remedy: Hang up. That's not much different than radio or TV. If you don't want to see a commercial, turn off the TV or switch channels. Your ownership of the television doesn't give you the right to prevent advertisers from broadcasting into your living room. Similarly, your ownership of a phone doesn't mean you can suppress usage of incoming lines. If you would rather eat dinner uninterrupted, just turn off the ringer. You can even use caller ID or record your messages and return them selectively.My radio and TV don’t turn on at random intervals, sometimes early in the morning when I’m trying to sleep, and then stay on until I turn them off again. By the time you can hang-up on a telemarketer, the damage has already been done: you’ve been disturbed. Now, it’s true that I can turn off my phone’s ringer, but doing so blocks all calls, including (say) an emergency call from a friend or relative who’s in the hospital or having car trouble.
The analogy between turning off your TV and turning off your phone is false. A broadcaster’s transmissions don’t “activate” my TV in the same manner that a telemarketer’s calls “activate” my phone. By turning off my TV or changing the channel, I can keep out specific programs at specific times from specific sources; by turning off my ringer, I keep out all calls, wanted or unwanted, mundane or emergency.
The analogy between EMS transmissions and phone lines is also false, because (as noted earlier), even if the phone company owns the phone lines, the phone company has effectively given me renter’s rights over them. I do not, on the other hand, have any ownership claim over frequency bands on the EMS. And again, even if my phone line argument fails, I still have ownership over my phone.
The lines coming into a home are either owned by a private carrier (like Cox or Comcast or Time Warner) or by a common carrier (like BellSouth, Verizon, Quest or SBC). If the lines are owned by a private carrier, the user's contract will control whether and how calls are screened. Almost all private carriers have call-blocking technology. Naturally, carriers would be liable for breach of contract.See comments above on phone lines. Yes, I could contract with my phone company to block calls, just as I could contract with my landlord to hire security guards to keep out burglars. That doesn’t mean that I can’t also call the cops if someone burgles my apartment.
But if the lines are owned by a common carrier, then government dictates the rules. Indeed, government has placed limits on the ability of common carriers to police their own networks, which must be available to serve all comers. Longer term, the solution is to get rid of the common carrier model and substitute private carriers so the market, rather than government, regulates access.I agree with Levy on this point. But even under such a regime, if my contract with my carrier did not specify otherwise, I could still employ public means of protecting my property rights.
Proponents of no-call point to the Supreme Court's 1970 Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Department decision. The Court upheld the constitutionality of a scheme whereby each mail recipient could direct advertisers to exclude the recipient from unwanted mailings. But the Post Office is different. First, it's a monopoly and, therefore, affords no opportunity for competitive privacy models.The Post Office’s monopoly status does make a stronger case, but it’s not necessary for the argument. The existence of a competitive rental housing market doesn’t refute my argument above about calling the cops to catch burglars.
Second, mailboxes can't be turned off the way that phone ringers, radios, and televisions can. Without mail blocking, senders can trespass on recipients' property.Well, you could refuse to sort your mail and just dump it all into the garbage, but that would mean losing your desired mail as well. Similarly, if you turn off your ringer, you keep out the unwanted calls only by keeping out the wanted calls.
Third, the Post Office scheme allows recipients to choose which particular senders to exclude. Neither Congress nor a government agency categorizes senders in a manner that requires blanket exclusion or blanket access.The DNC list does not give “blanket access” to callers if you don’t put your name on the list. The DNC list merely give you the option of blanket exclusion. If you choose not to use the list, you can still instruct specific telemarketers to remove you from their lists. (And they are required by law to do so – does Levy oppose that law as well?)
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Rear Viewpoints
If you read the Volokh Conspiracy, you know they've been having a mini-debate on bumper stickers, Jesus fish, and Darwin fish. Click here for the latest. But for once, I can say I got there before the VC; see my previous posts here and here.
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Cream Mixing (or, The Fable of the B's, C's, and D's)
Alex expands on the point I made below, that public schools also “cream skim” by creating Honors tracks and magnet schools. Among other things, Alex notes:
More generally, the argument in the peer-effects literature is that we shouldn't let smart kids escape the public school system because their presence gives dumb kids a positive externality. I detest this argument. Children are not pawns to be moved about to satisfy the desires of some grand master. A decent school system treats children as ends in themselves.Characterizing the benefit of smart kids to dumb kids as a “positive externality” raises an interesting point. Let’s suppose it’s true that the presence of smart kids really does improve the educational performance of the dumb kids. The primary lesson of the Coase Theorem is that externalities can often be internalized through market transactions. Thus, to use one famous example, the fact that honey bees provide positive externalities to apple orchards (by pollinating apple blossoms) does not mean there will necessarily be an inefficiently low level of beekeeping. Why not? Because the owners of apple orchards can pay the beekeepers to release bees in their orchards. And indeed, this is exactly what happens, according to a 1973 article (“The Fable of the Bees”) by Steven Cheung.
What is the analogous arrangement in schooling? Scholarships, of course. Lower-ranked colleges regularly make sweet offers to good students to lure them away from higher-ranked schools, because such students are likely to raise the school’s prestige and make larger contributions as alumni. The non-scholarship students benefit from both effects. If it’s really the case that smart students create positive “peer effects” externalities, there’s every reason to believe that private schools in a voucher system would find ways to achieve the optimal mix. And they would do so without treating the best students as merely means to an end, because they would have to reward such students for their beneficial choices.
Saturday, October 18, 2003
Evaluating School Choice
A recent study of Chile’s school choice program, which purports to show no significant improvement in student performance under the program, has touched off another round of Alex and Tyler’s mini-debate on educational vouchers (see here, here, here, and here). Like Alex, I continue to think that vouchers are a good idea. One study of one foreign country’s school choice program – in the context of other studies showing better results elsewhere – is not sufficient to make me a pessimist.
But what if it turned out that school choice programs (to clarify, vouchers are just one mechanism for implementing school choice) were not really effective in improving student test scores and other measures of performance? Would that necessarily mean school choice is a bad idea? I think not, for three reasons.
First, even if school choice delivered no improvement in performance, it might deliver the same level of performance at lower cost. I only skimmed the report on Chile, but I found no reference at all to the cost of education.
Second, there are reasons to favor school choice other than cost and performance, one of which is the value of choice in itself. Standardized performance measures cannot capture the value to students and their families of being able to get the kind of education they want. As I argued in one of the first posts on this blog, school choice has the potential to defuse a number of policy conflicts that result from the one-size-fits-all character of public education: bilingual education vs. immersion, prayer vs. no prayer, single-sex vs. coeducation, and so on. Even if all private schools performed equally on measures of basic skills, they could be producing greater value as perceived by the actual consumers.
Third, we should be skeptical about performance as measured by average or median scores on standardized tests, repetition rates, and drop-out rates (as in the Chilean study). Measures like these are unlikely to capture changes in the performance of the very best students. Median scores are completely unaffected by improvements in the performance of students at the top end of the scale. Average scores are affected, but possibly not much, because standardized tests typically cover basic skills that the very best students are likely to understand well anyway. (Taking calculus in high school was valuable to me, but it probably had little effect on my standardized test scores, because calculus is not a topic covered on those tests.) Repeat and drop-out rates have little to do with the best students, who are inclined to finish high school on time whether there’s choice or not. Yet the top students could be among the greatest beneficiaries of school choice, because they can attend schools that specialize in providing upper-level courses in the areas in which students are most motivated.
As a corollary to this point, we should also be skeptical of the claim that the “cream-skimming” apparently practiced by private schools in Chile (according to the study) is necessarily a bad thing. There are virtues to separating students according to their ability, and some of those virtues will not be picked up in the standard measures. (The cream-skimming in Chile seems to be related to socioeconomic status, but the authors themselves used socioeconomic status as a proxy for ability, and they do not try to separate the effects.) Public school systems often have Honors tracks and magnet schools, and while these programs have their critics, I have never heard them referred to as “cream-skimming.” The fact that the ability-level tracking might occur across schools, rather than within them, under a school choice program is hardly a compelling argument against school choice.
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Tragedies
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.
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.
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