Young, Hip and Conservative: a skeptical blog

Who's really throwing their vote away

2012-02-01T22:31:00.003-05:00

I'm in the camp that believes that voting in the presidential race is irrational. The odds that your vote will change the outcome is too slight to justify the time you spend voting. However, smaller elections, like a vote for town council, give voters much better odds of making a difference.

But tell that to the voting population, they tend to avoid town council elections. Nearly 40 percent of them also avoid presidential elections too, of course.

I want to vote libertarian and unfortunately the closest thing we have to a libertarian candidate is Ron Paul, which is like wanting a sandwich and ordering a quesadilla. The only way Paul will ever get a chance at winning the election is if Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are caught having an affair with each other before the primary is over. I know voting for Paul in the primary won't be enough to get him the Republican nomination.

And without a nomination from one of the two parties, he won't have a chance at winning. Yet, I still might vote for him.

Think about it, if one is afraid of voting for a third-party candidate because that will be "throwing their vote away," they have to believe their vote is worth something in the first place. I don't think my vote is going to change the results.

But when you vote for a doomed option like the Paul, a Libertarian candidate or the Green party, you could help make a statistical boost to their results. They'll still lose, but you can help them command more influence with the established parties.

Can you spot the fake Keynesian?

2012-01-30T00:02:00.014-05:00

As promised, I have assembled a team of informed Keynesians and left-wing econ fans to answer some general questions about modern economists. Mixed in with their answers are my own, using my understanding of left-wing economics to answer them from that perspective. I did not Google any of my answers or look at what someone else wrote first.

Before I get started, a special thank you to Joshua Zelinsky of Religion, Sets, and Politics who provided the questions used in this experiment. Thanks Joshua, you were a great help.

I used a random number generator to choose the order for the answers from my guests and I, and the order remains constant for each question. Instead of attributing each answer to writer A, B, C and D, I have labeled them as Al Pacino, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro because it's my blog and it's more fun that way.

The identities of each writer will be revealed in one week. Now on with it!

Question 1: Does government funding of scientific research do more good than harm?

I think that government funding for R&D is very important and, in most cases, relatively effective. It's important to take into consideration the role of the patent-granting activities of the government as the most potent tool for the advancement of scientific research and development, particularly in the pharmaceutical and medical science fields. Without the economic security granted by a patent, companies involved in the research and development of new technologies and advancements would have very little incentive to continue their work if they have no assurances of profit-maximization opportunities once they've developed or discovered something important. In my view, government funding of R&D and scientific and technological advancements in general should be a transcendent policy issue - everybody from every corner of the political and ideological arena should be able to recognize just how worthy of an investment this sort of spending is to the future of the country.

The government funding of science does more good than harm. Scientific research raises our collective good by investing in the intellectual capital of its people. In addition research by the government paves the way for private industry to profit from their discoveries. This is particularly true with Tempur-pedic fabric and nuclear technology.

It would depend upon the scientific research. Martial scientific research, like research in advanced weaponry, does little to improve our economy. War is ultimately a destructive force with net economic losses. Profit aligns with our values often enough to rely on it to drive economic growth a majority of the time, but the alignment isn’t seamless and it’s my opinion that a democratic society can decide to allocate resources for research in areas where start-up costs are too high for for-profit entrepreneurs to be attracted to it.

Scientific breakthroughs are public goods, and you subsidize public goods with positive externalities. That's econ 101, folks. Private companies need to justify research with short-term profits, and what happens if their funding shuts off in short order? How could you hope to have a massive project like the Collider - a machine the size of a racetrack - to satisfy curiosity and not make money? What about figuring out how nature works in general with no intended application? These are major market failures.

Question 2: What caused the current recession and what is the best thing the government can do to help us get out of it?

The current recession was causes by a toxic confluence of events precipitated by bad economic policy and a healthy dose of bad luck. The massive amounts of deregulation in the Reagan and Clinton years led to an environment on Wall Street in which poisonous mortgage-backed securities (subprime) and derivatives became the centerpiece of trading and investing behavior. Predatory and ill-advised mortgage lending made these securities toxic and the vile collusion between ratings agencies and financial institutions led to these investments being used for pensions and 401Ks and other such investment activities which subsequently tanked. Massive tax cuts, an unpaid for prescription drug benefit for Medicare and two incredibly expensive and unpaid for wars, in addition to the mess on Wall Street and the housing bubble, are the main causes of the current disastrous economy.

I propose that increased government spending in targeted, stimulative areas such as hiring tax credits, R&D, infrastructure programs, unemployment benefits, job training programs, education, and so on, will be the most effective ways to stimulate and jump start the economy. This need only last until full employment is reached. Full employment however is not 0% unemployment but there is a 4% to 6% level. Due to the leakages from MPS (marginal propensity to save) the government spending option provides a more direct, dollar-for-dollar boost to the economy at a time when neither consumers nor producers are in a position to do much in the way of growth-oriented economic activity.

The current recession was caused by lack of oversight and hubris: Oversight on the side of the major rating houses and hubris on the part of bankers. Bankers had to feed a demand for more and more mortgage backed securities, so they had to become creative with how they acquired them and bundled them together. This, combined with rating houses giving risky securities AAA ratings, was a recipe for disaster.

I honestly don’t know what happened - I have not studied the recession in great detail. But what I do know is that the state of our nation is nothing remotely close to what it was during the depression or other serious economic downturns. Whatever was or wasn’t done by the government (bailouts?) has likely either saved us, or their affects were negligible (nothing was harmed) and economic forces kept our machine oiled.

The recession was not caused by deregulation per say, existing protective laws were not relaxed. Instead it came from the stubborn refusal to adopt new regulations for new financial products. Derivatives and sub-prime loans entered the marketplace with no safety rail, and the economy went over the cliff.

We're already out of the recession now, but that doesn't mean the government can't still speed up the recovery with public works projects and putting more money in the hands of the impoverished through redistribution, who will spend more of it right away. Yes, you can let the wound heal on its own, but why not put some neosporin on it to speed up the process?

Question 3: How serious a problem is deadweight loss? What are the primary causes and what can be done to reduce it?

Dead weight loss is a serious problem. If you observe a graphic representation, you can see what is called the "welfare loss triangle" to get a nice visual sense of how and why this phenomenon exists. The primary causes of dead weight loss are taxes, price floors and price ceilings. In all three instances, government imposes policies that interfere and obstruct the natural machinations of markets where the markets would ordinarily adjust through the price mechanism of supply and demand, thus arriving at equilibrium levels through the invisible hand. When taxes are paid, not all of the taxes paid are collected by government due to leakages which result in dead weight loss. The same is true of price floors and ceilings; price floors cause an excess of supply and thus dead weight loss and price ceilings cause an excess of demand and result in dead weight loss as well.

I would say at this point in history dead weight loss is less of a problem than it has ever been. Major causes of deadweight loss are monopolies, cartels, and other supplies in collusion. The best way to combat it it is to maintain strong antitrust laws and keep a vigilant eye on mergers. Of particular interest at this point would be the cell phone providers in the US.

I can’t think of any consumer driven causes, but there are plenty of ways either suppliers or states can create deadweight loss. State tools include taxation, subsidies, price ceilings and floors, etc. Supplier tools include monopolistic/oligopolistic price gouging. I admit, I can’t remember a whole lot about the subject, but I might speculate the seriousness of deadweight loss is highly dependant on the volume of the loss and/or the subjective intrinsic/sentimental value of the consumer product. In the event where deadweight loss is undesirably high, the solution to correct it will depend on the cause. State driven deadweight loss requires legislation to correct. I’m unsure about the best way to correct supplier driven deadweight loss, but it might be to break up the monopoly.

Deadweight losses - where something is taxed and less of it is created - are not always a problem. That's the whole idea of Pigovian taxes - when you tax something, you get less of it - including tobacco use, soda consumption and other activities that have negative costs to society. It's true you see some marginal changes with taxes when you have elastic demands, but that just shows how serious the job of setting tax rates is.

Question 4: The leader of a small country in the developing world asks for your advice about monetary and fiscal policy. What do you say to them?

I would advise an aggressive mix of expansionary fiscal and monetary policies. Expansionary fiscal policies are either increasing government spending or cutting taxes. Since a developing nation is in similar conditions to what a nation like the U.S. would characterize as a "recession", I would advice going the route of increased government spending. Keynesian principles hold that deficit spending during a recession is the best and most effective way to stimulate economic growth. The reason is simply - government spending is most directly impactful on an economy because it does not have to be filtered through households and firms, where a decision has to be made in terms of what to spend, save or invest. Infrastructure spending and projects are great for stimulating an economy on two levels: the short-term increases in employment as people are needed to build, repair and plan these projects. And the long-term impacts are very important as a strong and modern infrastructure can very often be the vehicle of economic growth, such as the expansion of the interstate highway system in the mid 20th century and the advent of the Internet in the 1990s, each of which acted as tremendously important innovations and investments for the U.S. economy.

On the monetary side, I would also advocate an expansionary policy by increasing the money supply and thus lowering the interest rate. When the interest rates are low and credit is more readily available, firms and businesses can more easily invest and expand which will in turn increase employment and consumption. This will happen for the basic reason that as the money supply is increased, demand for money decreases and interest rates decrease accordingly. Interest rates are in essence the "price" of money and when money is cheap, firms and households can engage in larger amounts of economic activity.

Take a hard and brutal look at your country and decide what competitive advantage it might have over others in the region, and if transportation and infrastructure is in place, then the world. In addition, when allowing foreign companies to develop in country, require a percentage of their revenue to remain in country.

Monetary policy is not my area of expertise. I struggled in college to make the connections between interest rates and currency values, with trade and economic growth. Relative to developing nations and our past, our country has enjoyed a very long period of economic stability while employing state controls over the value of our currency and interest rates. But I may be confusing causality and correlation. I would argue that measures should be taken to stabilize currency, as opposed to letting it succumb to the whims of economic forces. Developing nations are much more vulnerable to instability and exploitation.

As for fiscal policy - developing nations tend to have fewer social institutions and stability. Good business depends on good relationships and a strong (don’t read as “big”) government that can enforce rules and agreements (no matter how few, libertarians.) Strong public investment in education is highly recommended.

I’ll go a step further and talk about trade policy as well. I would suggest free trading blocs with regional states at comparable stages of development. States that have opened trade with large Western nations get stuck producing (or rather just gathering) primary goods for export. While its an improvement from subsistence farming, it could be a dead end and unsustainable. Trade with regional partners strengthens political ties (reduces the chance of war, which is much more likely in developing nations) and diversifies markets.

I'm assuming we have a democracy, not an autocrat state, if we expect the advice to be heard. For monetary policy, have a central bank with a lot of government oversight to make sure monetary policy is being used appropriately, and put in safeguards to keep someone from running wild with the printing press like we saw in Zimbabwe. If the nation is small enough, why not have no monetary policy and adopt a foreign currency like the US dollar?

Fiscal policy needs to be tailored to the area. Do they have an AIDS problem? If so, thats going to require a lot of medical spending. Is there a lot of inequality to smooth out? I could give the boilerplate Keynesian prescription, but I'd have to know what I'm working with.

Question 5: Assume we discover an easy method of transportation to a planet with a far off alien species that is friendly and about the same technological level. Assuming small costs of transportation of goods to and from their civilization, what are the most likely economic consequences of such trade

According to Ricardo (and any other economist with a brain) engaging in free and fair trade will only benefit both trading partners. It will be imperative to first determing what we have an absolute advantage in and more importantly what we have a comparative advantage in; when I say "in" I mean in producing - what can we produce more efficiently than the aliens can or what can we produce at a lower opportunity cost in terms of other goods. If we specialize in that which we have those goods in which we enjoy a comparative advantage and the aliens do the same on their end, free trade between the two parties will benefit both. Real wages will rise and each trading partner will end up with more of all of the goods being traded than they would have if they'd chosen to keep all production and trade domestic. The only times I will even consider supporting protectionism or limitations on trade is in the case of "infant industry" or with respect to national security concerns.

Trade is good. If Gordon Gekko were a space trader he would have said the same thing. Trade will help out both countries, (sorry, planets) even if they are at the same technological level. The most likely consequence of such trade would be more specialization and lower prices on all goods involved.

We would easily see economic growth.

Depends if the general public can get over their irrational fears that "aliens are taking our jobs." The best case scenario is free trade with these beings, which will benefit both human and alien civilizations. There will be specific losers on both sides of space, like laborers who see their industry moving off-planet, but in total everyone will benefit. More "people" to cooperate with means more specialization and more gains from trade.

Question 6: Most would agree that as an economic theory, mercantilism suffered many flaws. If you had to identify a single biggest flaw what would it be and why?

The flaws in mercantilism relate very closely to my response to to the previous question. If government is too tightly restricting trade, consumers will have to pay higher prices for commodities that are expensively and ineeficiently produced domestically. The mercantilistic insistence on a "positive" trade balance is naive because it implies that there is something wrong with importing more than you export - there is not. The U.S. is uniquely positioned to lead in the information tech and information services sectors while other nations, such as China, are better suited to the manuifacturing of consumer goods. Mercantilism in short is an obnoxious and short-sighted repudiation of the reality of globalization. As I stated in the previous response, when trading terms are worked out fairly and intelligently, both partenrs end up with more of all goods being traded and the consumers and producers in both trading nations end up better off.

Anyone who has played a game of Settlers of Catan can tell you that it is harder to win if you don’t trade. However you define winning it is easier with trade. Whether winning involves; increased productivity, political stability, standard of living, or simply highest yield. In any case the greatest flaw of mercantilism would be that of its restrictive nature towards trade.

I hate following rules, so I will give you TWO major flaws: First, we probably suffered from EXCESSIVE deadweight loss under mercantalism - I realize that may seem redundant to some, but in a previous answer I argued that some deadweight loss may be regarded as negligible or tolerable.

Secondly, Mercantalism fostered jingoistic nationalism a driving factor for both wars and exploitative colonialism both of which were highly destructive.The best thing competing European countries did was open up trade between each other after WWII. I would argue that Western European Nations will never go to war with each other again *quickly sweeps sectarian-violence-in-Northern-Ireland under the carpet.*

I'd say confusing shiny rocks, be they gemstones, gold, silver or certificates that stand for them, with wealth. Wealth is in things like raw materials, manufactured goods, usable items and services. Mercantalists were willing to trade away those things to bring in more shiny rocks. They could indeed exchange these rocks for resources, but they chose to choke off incoming resources in lieu of more shiny rocks, thus making them poorer in the practical sense.

That's everything. Can you guess which one is actually a freshwater economics writer attempting to answer from a Keynesian perspective? The link to the answer will go here in a week.

What I missed in 2011

2012-01-30T00:01:00.002-05:00

Each January I write a post about a topic from the previous year I missed writing about, as can be seen here and here.

In June 2011 I posted about conducting an intellectual Turing test to see if I understand left-wing and Keynesian economics well enough to blend in with the real ones. I contacted some friends and acquaintances for help. Joshua Zelinsky of Religion, Sets, and Politics was kind of enough to draft the questions in a timely manner, but after a lot of hounding only three people submitted answers to mix in with my own. Others agreed to and I was foolishly holding out for them.

I was hoping for another set of answers, but I am finally publishing the four sets I have instead of letting this go dormant another day. The questions and answers are available in a single post and I will reveal who was who in a week. I turned off the comments in that post for the benefit of future readers.

For the next post in this series, click here.

Looks like I have to defend these people again

2012-01-28T16:06:00.008-05:00

Another year, another well-intentioned assault on free speech in a public school to punish a student who doesn't accept homosexuality.

Brandon Wegner writes for a student newspaper in the Shawano School District is Wisconsin. He and another student wrote competing editorial on gay adoption, as can be viewed here. Wegner wrote in opposition and his argument wasn't very good, as can be expected when any high school student writes about political opinions.

But despite writing like a normal high school student trying to defend a bogus position, what happened next was absurd.

Brandon was hauled before the superintendent on charges that he had violated the school’s bullying policy. Superintendent Todd Carlson told him that the column “went against the bullying policy,” and asked him if he “regretted” writing it. When Mr. Wegner stated that he did not regret writing it, and that he stood behind his beliefs, Superintendent Carlson told him that he “had got to be one of the most ignorant kids to try to argue with him about this topic,” that “we have the power to suspend you if we want to” and that the column had “personally offended me, so I know you offended other people!”

People, I don't like having to defend anti-gay high school students, like I did in November 2010. I don't like his position at all, and his use of the Bible to justify a generic anti-gay position is lackluster. That still doesn't justify the school district's stupid position that expressing ones views in a calm, disconnected manner is only allowed when it comes down on one side of this rapidly-decaying issue.

I was one of those kids. I grew up a christian who knew that part of the Bible rejected homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle, calling it an abomination. I remember choosing that side of the issue because of the Bible. I also remember when I got to high school I realized I was on the same side of the issue as the Ku Klux Klan and there must be something wrong here and switched sides.

My school never had frank and open discussions where students got to share their opinions and feelings about gays without fear of being punishment. Don't get me wrong, we had an accepting school staff. There were several openly gay teachers who had upside-down Apple computer logo stickers on their classroom doors because they couldn't find rainbow stickers anywhere else.

I don't think younger people today realize how much has changed for gay acceptance in their lifetime. It was socially acceptable to say "fag" right up until the end of the 1990's. I would have benefited from an open discussion because my views were weak and unchallenged. I would have come around a lot sooner, and unfortunately, students like Brandon Wegner are being robbed of that chance to learn.

Eventually, my generation came around. It was through the free exchange of ideas that my generation came to accept gays, not authoritarian commands.

Adamantium Clause: A friend wrote that the logical conclusion of Wegner's piece is that gays should be exterminated, because of the Bible verse he referenced over and over that said gays should be executed for displeasing God. I maintain that Wegner is a poor writer and that interpretation was never his intention, and it is not the primary interpretation of the piece. He was simply quoting that verse to prove that God loves everyone but the gays.

Superintendent Todd Carlson's written statement suggests his problem with the piece was he found it offensive, not that it was a call for violence:

The Shawano School District would like to apologize for a recent article printed in the Hawks Post newspaper. Proper judgment that reflects school district policies needs to be exercised with articles printed in our school newspaper. Offensive articles cultivating a negative environment of disrespect are not appropriate or condoned by the Shawano School District. We sincerely apologize to anyone we may have offended and are taking steps to prevent items of this nature from happening in the future.

Guest column on video game portfolios

2012-01-26T21:51:00.004-05:00

My friend Kevin, who gave up his childhood dream of becoming a con artist to pursue an MBA, has started a video game essay and review site called Retro Tavern with some people I don't know and would be able to pick out of a lineup.

I've written a guest post on video game economics for the site, combining some ideas on scarcity and resource management with choosing which video games to buy and play.

In retrospect, a better title would have been "Why I don't play Skyrim" to show that my rule of budgeting game time, instead of just buying games because I like them, applies to a game that is said to be so good it threatens to damage the US Economy with lost work time.

Check a history book, Halifaxians

2012-01-24T12:49:00.006-05:00

Our northern neighbors are considering shooting themselves in the ski boot.

The city council in Halifax, Nova Scotia is looking at establishing a local purchasing preference for city bids.

The buy local motion was brought forward by District 12 Councillor Dawn Sloane.

Sloane took up the cause after a Dartmouth firm, Intelivote Systems Inc., lost the bid to provide telephone and e-voting for the next municipal election. A Spanish firm said it could to the job for $553,007, a full $330,000 less than Intelivote's bid. Although Intelivote had done the work previously, the Spanish firm won the contract.

Dawn Sloane says the city should have a scoring process that gives extra points to local companies, but given the huge difference in price, it's hard to think of any buy local policy that would have awarded this contract to the local bidder.

But what if the difference isn't as pronounced? Recently a local company lost a bid to provide work boots to the municipality. The Halifax-based firm put in a bid of $72,431. The contract was awarded to a New Brunswick company that bid $69,801 - a difference of just 3.76%.

The question is - where do you draw the line? Should the local company win the bid if its price is 5% higher than the lowest bid, or 10% or 15%, or in the case of Intelivote 60% higher? And what about the quality of the goods and services being offered? Should the local business win the contract even if its product is slightly inferior?

I'm sympathetic to the politicians this time around because they do understand that major savings are worth importing. They want to find an algorithm to learn at what point they should change directions and be willing to pay more under the assumption that buying from local businesses is good for the community.

Unfortunately, that assumption still makes the same old bogus assumptions. You are still instructing local people to do things they are not skilled at performing. The government could still be paying more taxpayer money for inferior service.

The Halifaxians should consider learning from our mistakes, such as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act from 1930.

However, if they'd prefer local information, they can look to the west and read what Karen Selick of Ontario had to say on the "Buy Belleville" campaign.

Update: A resident of Halifax wrote to inform me they are called Haligonians, not Halifaxians. I was wrong.

Arguments from Democracy

2012-01-22T11:00:00.002-05:00

I'm submitting a new logical fallacy classification called an "Argument from Democracy" for public consumption. It probably won't make it to the Nizkor Project, as it's a subset of the Appeal to Popularity.

I first noticed it around the time I started this blog when Russ Roberts debated Bill McKibben on the "Buy Local" issue. Roberts criticized communities that pass special ordinances restricting store sizes in an effort to keep out chains like Walmart and McKibben defended the policy by saying it was established through democratic means.

So were Jim Crow laws, prohibition and Don't Ask, Don't Tell. That doesn't make them reputable.

I'm reminded of something John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty about the wisdom of the public:

They are always a mass, that is to say, collective mediocrity. And what is still greater novelty, the mass do not now take their opinions from dignitaries in Church or State, from ostensible leaders, or from books. Their thinking is done for them by men much like themselves, addressing them or speaking in their name, on the spur of the moment, through the newspapers.

The Founding Fathers understood that the whims of the public poses serious risks and that's why they opposed direct democracy. It is fallacious to believe that simply through the act of voting, all of the ignorance, misconceptions and the superstitions of the general public will be washed away and replaced with complete metaphysical wisdom.

More economics for skeptics

2012-01-21T23:16:00.001-05:00

I've made a few attempts in the past to introduce basic economics to skeptics, as it's an important science that painfully misunderstood in the skeptical community.

As such, I was very happy to stumble across this recent episode of Rationally Speaking, the New York City Skeptic's podcast where author Joseph Heath talked about his book "Economics without Illusions."

It starts off a bit worrying, as the subtitle is "Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism" and early in the interview Heath said he didn't take economics classes in college because he thought it was a right-wing ideology.

However, he went back as an adult and the evidence lead him to accept capitalism while still identifying as a progressive. The bulk of the book is six myths the right believes about economics and six myths held by the left.

If that wasn't enough, Heath was eager to share Friedrich von Hayek's lesson that the problem with socialism isn't just getting people to work. It's not motivation so much as information, as he puts it. It's a great summary of The Use of Knowledge in Society.

The interview reminded me of a recent Bryan Caplan piece about "substitution" as an explanation for economic illiteracy. Caplan explained that a lot of positions the economically illiterate hold can be understood as an answer to a different, simpler question.

For example, when asked if the minimum wage helps low-skilled workers, they may give an answer to the question "Would I be happy if employers gave low-skilled workers a raise?"

The podcast is worth giving a listen, which implies the book is good as well.

Are you sure you're opposed to Citizen's United?

2012-01-19T08:50:00.006-05:00

After yesterday's overindulgence of anti-SOPA Internet blanketing, I can't help but notice that a large swathe of people I know went from posting passionate defenses of freedom of speech on Wednesday to a Thursday of cries to allow the government censor speech by amending the Constitution to overturn Citizens United.

Yes, SOPA would have been a problem if passed. I fully support measures to stop piracy, but not by giving government officials powers beyond due process and trusting them to only use it fairly. This always, always, leads to abuse.

Yet those same people are upset about a court case that allows groups of people to broadcast criticisms of politicians around election time.

Actually, they're not really upset by that because most of them don't understand that's what Citizen's United is. They assume it allows big businesses to spend unlimited amounts on political lobbying, which is not true.

I've never kept it a secret that I support corporate personhood, but that isn't what the case is about. The Citizens United case didn't just free the speech of for-profit businesses, it also applied to organizations like the ACLU, labor unions and media companies.

These people aren't actually against the case they say they're against. They are, in fact, against a different issue and have allowed themselves to follow a fad without doing any real research.

But let me take the activists on at their true point. I'll disregard their intellectual sloppiness and engage them on their central issue: should we trust the government to put a cap on how much speech a private corporation can make?

This is simple, all I need to do is share the same quote I used last time that retired ACLU executive director Ira Glasser wrote on the Huffington Post:

The inequities of speech that flow from the inequities of wealth are certainly a big and distorting problem for a democracy, and have always been so, and not just during elections. No one knows how to remedy that, short of fundamental re-distributions of wealth. But I'll tell you what isn't a remedy: granting the government the power to decide who should speak, and how much speech is enough. Nothing but disaster flows from that approach, and that was what was at stake in this case.

You can not claim to be a champion of free speech one day and then call for restrictions the very next day hoping to silence organizations you don't like. Most of the anti-Citizens United activists are grossly ignorant about the most basic details of the case.

If instead of a movie about a politician, Citizens United had written a book, would you allow the government to seize all the copies and burn it?

BONUS: As I was searching for the Popehat link about the New Jersey Department of Public Affairs claimed national security when it locked up the details on a barn it was building to house road salt, I came across a post that makes a better argument than mine. Ken gives a roundhouse punch when he says that it was corporate speech from Google, Wikimedia and Reddit that made the SOPA protest so big. Do these same people think those websites should have been censored from weighing in on proposed anti-piracy legislation?

How much speech should they have been allowed to have?

Where is this godless Democratic party I keep hearing about?

2012-01-18T00:07:00.006-05:00

It's no secret that there's an overwhelming base of left wing politics in both scientific skepticism and secular communities. I recently wrote that skeptics should reconsider their assumption that a progressive government will select competent people who understand and respect science to run the country. I used this as a platform for them to consider becoming libertarians. This time, I want secular people to consider being anything other than Democrats.

In 2010 gay conservative Andrew Sullivan said:

Certainly gay people do not want to become a Democratic party constituency that is totally taken for granted, which is of course what has happened. When you have no leverage over a party, they don't do anything for you except take your money and invite you to cocktail parties, which is all that's happened in two years under Obama with two houses of Congress.

The secular world is extremely left wing, and everyone knows it, including the Democratic party. That's why they don't do anything for atheists. They know the heathens will never run to the GOP and making secular issues central will only scare off the religious voters they are struggling to court.

Remember how the atheist community made a big deal out of the time in early 2010 when the Secular Coalition for America got to meet with a handful of President Obama's staff? Some fools on the right tried to read too much into it, but it was just for show, like the shout-out Obama gave to non-believers during his inauguration. He's the same president who not only tolerated Bush's Faith-Based Initiatives, but actually expanded them.

I am not expecting the secular community to go to the GOP that treats secular people with contempt or switch to some hopeless fringe group like the National Atheist Party. Instead, I'd like my fellow godless heathens to consider leaving the Democrats and joining the Green Party or registering as independents for a little while until they win you back with some real change.

My friends, the Democrats aren't doing anything for the secular community. They don't think you'll ever leave. Make them set down the Bible and earn your vote.

While you're there, fix the button

2012-01-16T10:14:00.005-05:00

A small but successful campaign is forcing the U.S Department of the Interior to modify a quote on the side of the Martin Luther King, Jr. monument in Washington D.C.

The missing context and omissions of two small words in the quote makes King sound arrogant. Gone unnoticed is a glaring error on the front of the statue that makes King look foolish.

There's a rule in men's fashion called Sometimes-Always-Never. That identifies which buttons to button, from top to bottom, in a three-button suit jacket.

As a well-dressed preacher who told his freedom marchers to wear their Sunday best, King knew this rule. We can see in photographs that he followed it.

Yet, his statue depicts the bottom button fastened like a frat boy concealing a Daffy Duck tie at the spring formal with the sisters of Alpha Sigma Ho.

Maybe if they had found a sculptor who did real research on his subject, instead of building agitprop monuments for barbarians like Mao Zedong, we wouldn't have this problem.

All they have to do is chisel the button off and leave an empty buttonhole shape behind. Fixing the quote will require a lot more work than chipping a little class into the rock.

I don't support the King is Ours group that formed to demand that a black sculptor design the monument. I think the name of the groups demonstrates they failed to grasp Dr. Kings lesson about equality between all people, not just blacks and whites. That being said, a black man would never have let something like this slip. One of the King is Ours organizers is even named Clint Button.

Three cheers for carrion-eaters

2012-01-15T00:12:00.003-05:00

Mitt Romney's success in the GOP primary has lead to some harsh criticism from rivals Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, comparing Romney's old private equity firm Bain Capital to a vulture that feasts on the dead and leaves only bones behind.

Some people are saying that comparison isn't a fair description of Bain Capital's actions. But for this post, let's assume it was true. Let's say there are firms that break up troubled companies and harvest the assets, laying people off in large numbers. Is there ever an ethical time to do that?

Yes there is, as that's a public service that the economy needs. I could go into details of why that is, but there's already a great monologue from Danny DeVito that explains it all.

Can you imagine a world without vultures? An Earth without carrion beetles, blowflies or decompositing bacteria? Dead bodies would pile up and waste space. Their useless carcasses would tie up matter out of circulation in the circle of life. It's unpleasant to watch, but rot and scavenging are a necessary part of the ecosystem.

The same is true for businesses. Without vulture firms, we would have unneeded, wasteful or incompetent firms occupying office space, holding onto workers and wasting customer money. When those firms are eaten or rot, all those resource go back into circulation.

Healthy, fit animals have nothing to fear from the noble vulture. They are the avian custodians of our world.

How corporations are like bad politicians

2012-01-13T07:50:00.006-05:00

There's a misconception that libertarians, capitalists and supporters of free enterprise love corporations. We stick up for them sometimes, we want them to have certain rights and abilities and we trust them more than government entities.

Some of us don't even prefer small businesses to large corporations.

But that doesn't mean we love large corporations. I support corporate personhood, but I'm also concerned with corporations gaming the system and using political influence to conquer the marketplace.

I don't consider these positions contradictory in any way. Imagine the worst politician possible, someone who takes bribes from racist drug dealers to force children to be videotaped in public school bathrooms.

Would you expect someone who strongly believes in democracy or republicanism to defend that politician?

Of course not, because we understand that the belief is in the game and not the players.

The same is true for capitalism. I fully understand that some corporations will do awful, stupid, unethical or dangerous things. I don't excuse those failures, but I find them easier to tolerate than the problems caused by alternative systems.

I'm going to ask you just one more time. And it's local?

2012-01-11T23:02:00.002-05:00

I can't believe this show has been out for a year and I'm just finding out about it now.

On the right is Carrie Brownstein from a non-local band I love, Sleater-Kinney. On the left is Fred Armisen from Saturday Night Live. In the middle is a local actress.

I know it's about Portland Oregon, but all the characters would be right at home in Portland Maine.

Adam Smith vs. Friedrich August von Hayek

2012-01-09T23:01:00.008-05:00

It was Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World that first got me to notice "contradictory platitudes." Haste makes west, but a stitch in time saves nine. Where there's smoke, there's fire, but you can't tell a book by its cover. He who hesitates is lost, but fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Two heads are better than one, but too many cooks spoil the broth.

This weekend I started reading the newly-released volume two of Yoram Bauman's Cartoon Introduction to Economics that shared an Adam Smith quote from Book IV of the Wealth of Nations:

What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.

This idea started the classical view of economics, that running a country is like running a household. However, seeing it in this cartoony context caused my mind to contrast it with a famous Friedrich Hayek quote from The Fatal Conceit:

Part of our present difficulty is that we must constantly adjust our lives, our thoughts and our emotions, in order to live simultaneously within the different kinds of orders according to different rules. If we were to apply the unmodified, uncurbed, rules of the micro-cosmos (i.e. of the small band or troop, or of, say, our families) to the macro-cosmos (our wider civilisation), as our instincts and sentimental yearnings often make us wish to do, we would destroy it. Yet if we were always to apply the rules of the extended order to our more intimate groupings, we would crush them. So we must learn to live in two sorts of world at once.

Can I fit both of these ideas into my head without breaking something? I don't think I can. One of my favorite criticisms of communal societies and small-scale attempts at collectivism is that it doesn't scale. If that's true, how can I absorb Adam Smith's wisdom that a government should tighten its belt when times are tough, just like a household should?

Small businesses are a political fetish

2012-01-07T21:20:00.000-05:00

If there's one bit of rhetorical that's clueless from the left and condescending from the right, it's the worship of small businesses.

Small businesses are wholesome, mom and pop shops, right? They have closer ties to the community, treat workers better, pollute less and create more jobs than big companies.

Well, no, all of those claims are false.

It's popular for politicians to claim that small businesses create most new jobs in this country, so let's start there. You hear this from both donkey and elephant breeds. The crucial detail they are missing is that small businesses lose most of the jobs too, as they go under a lot. This is a classic case of counting the hits and not the misses, and that's why the policies intended to help small businesses fail at creating jobs.

From Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer:

...It’s still often claimed that that’s where all the real job action is. The claim is ultimately traceable to 1980s work by the consultant David Birch, who once famously said that 88% of the new U.S. jobs created in the first half of the 1980s were in firms employing fewer than 20 workers. That factoid was repeated by pundits and politicians, and has since made its way around the world. But it’s not true.

Mr. Birch came up with this nugget by playing with some computer tapes from the credit rating and business information firm Dun & Bradstreet. But a closer examination conducted some years later showed the D&B tapes to be full of errors, at odds not only with official unemployment insurance registration info, but even with the phone book. Firms were classed as being born and dying when they merely changed hands. And Mr. Birch’s methodology was pretty idiosyncratic, to put it kindly.

For example, firms that started in the very small category — fewer than 20 workers — were categorized for all time as staying there, even if they’d grown beyond the small category. Or, more wackily, if a firm with 600 employees had a bad year and canned 200 of them, this would show up as a gain of 400 jobs for the small business sector. Not that Mr. Birch ever fully disclosed his techniques, like most serious researchers would; he did, however, tell the Wall Street Journal in 1988 that his figures were “silly,” and that “I can change that number at will by changing the starting point or the interval. Anybody can make it come out any way they want.” Despite that confession, Mr. Birch is still taken seriously by the U.S. press.

American small businesses are defined as having less than 500 employees, a far cry from the small stores everyone pictures. Large businesses pay their employees more and environmental regulators have an easier time keeping tabs on them. They also employ local people and contribute to charities in the immediate area.

I don't mean to vilify small business, because they are still important for the economy. Large, successful businesses have to start somewhere. For what it's worth, every member of my family is a small business owner. Both my parents, my brother and even his wife all own their own small businesses. My father owns a small franchised store and the other three have farm and agricultural businesses.

I used to think as small businesses as having the blessing of being too small to hire lobbyists to game the system in their favor. That was until I learned they pool their resources together and form lobbying groups like the National Federation of Independent Business.

In the end, all businesses are important for the economy, large or small. It's popular to single out small businesses as being special, but that's just empty rhetoric.

As a footnote, the "buy local" activists usually throw in that local businesses tend to be small businesses, but that's not always the case. Coming from Maine, I've never heard localists say they're against buying from LL Bean, despite it being a huge corporation. Their flawed model makes no allowances for the size of a business. That's why I don't bother including this point in my normal treatments of their economic views.

Skeptical feminism in a nutshell

2012-01-05T10:48:00.009-05:00

I usually make my points in short essay format, but this morning I was inspired me to create something punchier.

Special thanks to Rebecca Watson for inspiring the first-ever YH&C political cartoon. Friedrich Hayek spoke of scientism, the use of scientific language and the trappings of science to make unscientific points. I think the feminist faction of skeptics are guilty of "skepticism" where they attempt to dismiss their opponents by falsely accusing them of being pseudoscientific and using logical fallacies.

Don't claim to speak for other people

2012-01-03T21:30:00.008-05:00

I don't think there's a mug of cocoa chocolaty enough or filled with enough marshmallows for me to me to read the comment section of a liberal blog without losing my happy mood.

Case in point a set of links Michael Hawkins shared with me on Facebook today. I couldn't make it through the first comment section without groaning to myself about how much I can't stand liberals - despite the irony that liberal Mr. Hawkins sent me the link with the same disagreement.

As I've written before, there's a faction in scientific skepticism that is trying to force political correctness onto the movement. They play the same old card, dividing the world neatly into feminists and misogynists. They make the unfalsifiable claim that the reason we men can't recognize the problems they claim are there is our male privilege, so we need to be silent and do whatever they tell us.

Yesterday a woman named Mallorie Nasrallah wrote a short essay saying these people don't speak for her. She's a woman who's been in the skeptical community for a long time and disagrees with everything the feminist faction is claiming.

The feminists didn't take it lying down and argued back, a bit viciously. Mallorie replied. What bothers me here isn't that Mallorie was criticized. No, that's part of the deal when you speak up. Criticism is a form of free speech, not tyranny. They had every right to fight back.

What bothers me here is that Mallorie had to frame it this way in the first place because other people were claiming to speak for her. That is the abuse of power.

It's no secret that I'm critical of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Most of their anger is directed at other people, but one thing that has always bothered me is their claim to speak for 99 percent of Americans. Polls have always shown that a smaller percent of the population support them. They claim they speak for people like me when they really don't.

I went through the same thing when I was on unemployment, where well-off progressives claimed they spoke for me when they wished to extend unemployment benefits. I opposed them, and I take it personally when people misrepresent themselves as speaking on my behalf.

Other people can argue is Mallorie is right or wrong, but one thing that is not up for debate is where she stand on the issue. She's a grown woman, let her speak for herself.

Wait, ALL of them? At the same time?

2012-01-01T21:13:00.005-05:00

There's a stir today because last night at the overhyped NBC New Year's Eve show singer Cee-Lo Green covered "Imagine" by John Lennon and reversed one of the lyrics.

Instead of telling people to imagine "Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too" he requested people picture "Nothing to kill or die for, And all religion's true."

Honestly, I think the secular community's anger over this incident is short-sighted. I understand that that song is sacred to them, as it created a myth that Lennon was an atheist, something he denied shortly before his death:

People always got the image I was an anti-Christ or antireligion. I'm not. I'm a most religious fellow. I was brought up a Christian and I only now understand some of the things that Christ was saying in those parables. Because people got hooked on the teacher and missed the message.

But what's important here is that Cee-Lo did the secular community a favor.

Take a moment and imagine that every religion is true. All of them. It's a mess.

You've got Muhammad and Quetzalcoatl fighting the Titans in Valhalla while Vishnu commands the Taurus bull. The Galatic Overlord Xenu is dodging djinns and Anubis to tempt Jesus in the desert before he breeds with giant Aryan women to bring them down to size. Who's in charge here, Ra, Jehovah, Zeus or Taiyang Shen? Can the light side of the force prevent Cthulhu from bringing Ragnarök to the world, which is made from the dead dragon Tiamat, or will the ancestral spirits and great mother turtle have to create a new one. Do faeries have chakras?

All religions being true would be like a Marvel-DC crossover, only with more unnecessary violence and less plausibility. What could be a better recruiting drive for atheism than for people to start 2012 by imagining a series of mutually-exclusive mythologies and folk tales competing for space in the same realm?

Mic check!

2011-12-29T00:16:00.007-05:00

Like most aspiring pundits, I enjoy Googling things just to make myself upset. That's why I just ended up doing a news search just to see what Michael Moore has been up to. I clicked on exactly two articles about him and the contrast was beautiful.

One was a list of suggestions he made for organized trespassers and the other was his cancellation of a comedy festival he helped organize out of fear that drunks from a brew fest would trickle in again.

Here's a quote from each:

Students should spend this winter doing what they are already doing on dozens of campuses -- holding sit-ins, occupying the student loan office, nonviolently disrupting the university regents meetings, and pitching their tents on the administration's lawn.

You may have noticed my introduction of a bold font at one point. Prepare to see it again.

...A number of shows were interrupted by drunks who had been to the beer fest and decided to visit the Comedy Fest for some yucks. Unfortunately, no one told them that the audience was there to see the famous comedians we brought in, and not them in their happily inebriated state. We didn't have to deal with this in our first year, when we were a stand-alone event. In our second year, anticipating problems, we had paid security, but we didn't have enough to deal with the disruptions...

An unwanted loud band of drunks competing for the spotlight sounds like the right medicine for Moore's comedy festival. It's too bad he canceled it, the irony would have been the best part of the show.

Are local people the master race?

2011-12-26T18:20:00.004-05:00

Forgive the post title's accusatory tone, but after reading this classic Bryan Caplan piece titled "Are Low-Skilled Americans the Master Race?" I can't stop myself from drawing the same comparison.

Localists claim that shifting production and purchases to inefficient local sources will make the community richer as part of a zero-sum game, where one group takes wealth from another. What they don't fill in is why the local people deserve to prosper at the expense of others. As Caplan writes:

OK, suppose you could give American high school dropouts an 8% raise by deporting every man, woman, and child from Latin America back to their home countries. Would that be the right thing to do?

Clearly not.

I don't think my opponents are inspired by racism, but it is true that the people they aim to help will typically be members of their own race, while the people they intend to harm will often be from another race.

Occasionally you do see localists arguing their strategy is a positive-sum game (it's not) but the majority of the time localists claim that the local people need to be the ones profiting, not outsiders.

This parasitic philosophy should be right at home with the people who ignore tragedies because they occur in non-English speaking countries.

The future of academic rap

2011-12-23T19:29:00.001-05:00

There are two guiding texts that shaped the way I write. The first one is Politics and the English Language by George Orwell, which I've written about before, and the second is The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.

This week Russ Roberts linked a mustache-enhanced rap video about The Elements of Style between students playing William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White.

The project was an attempt to communicate the ideas from Strunk and White with the same rap formula used for Keynes and Hayek. I don't think the song is well done or catchy so I'm not embedding it here, but it does present a good question: Is this the start of a trend, and if so, where is that headed?

Will we see clever rhymes and slightly cartoonish costumes with Milton Friedman trouncing John Kenneth Galbraith? Will Paul Samuelson and Greg Mankiw take to the mic to decide who wrote the better textbook? Will there be a duet between Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman? OK, there already is, but you get the point.

There is one set of econ rappers I'd love to see, although their song topic would be pretty open ended. Can you picture two 20-somethings try to replicate these mugs?

The stupid, it burns!

2011-12-20T23:30:00.005-05:00

Norway's butter protectionism just jumped the shark.

Last week I showed how Norway's stupid "buy local" style butter laws reveal the real consequences of restricting consumers to local producers. The country is experiencing a butter famine, thanks to unexpected low production and high demand, and those trade barriers are blocking butter from entering the nation.

Now two Swedes have been arrested for helping the public by bringing butter into the Norway. Remember how 250 grams, or about two sticks, was selling for the equivalent of $13? These guys were selling the same amount for $42. High, yes, but not as high as some Swedes were asking for online.

Mike Munger double posted on this issue, on his regular blog and the new euvoluntary exchange blog, and came to the same conclusion: Norwegian consumers are suffering from a lack of butter and the authorities are still patrolling the borders to keep any new butter out.

This is akin to the Haitian government blocking post-earthquake volunteer doctors from entering the country to promote the domestic medical industry. After this incident if you require more proof before you'll believe that "buy local" is a wasteful pipe dream, odds are you won't be literate enough to read it.

Sorry Norwegians, I'd love to help you out, but if I did I'd be arrested.

Goodbye, Chris

2011-12-17T09:30:00.006-05:00

Out of respect for Christopher Hitchens I am not calling him a personal hero, the way he declined to call George Orwell a hero.

I have been a fan of Hitchens since his 2006 appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher where he said George W. Bush IQ jokes require zero creativty, but in a way that did not defend Bush. A lot has already been written about his honesty, wit and refusal to fall neatly in line with any political orthodoxy. He was a self-described socialist who wrote a book called "God is Not Great," yet supported the Iraq war and opposed abortion.

Instead of retracing that ground, I am just sharing my all-time favorite "Hitchslap," which is the first four minutes of the following video, a link to his appearance on Econtalk and an excerpt from a talk he gave to the Cato Institute.

In 2004, Hitchens said on the Orwellian nature of public smoking bans:

But suppose all this was really a good idea—people might live longer. Suppose all that was really true. There would still be the question of enforcement, that awkward little bit that comes between your conception of utopia and your arrival there. The enforcement bit. You could appoint regulators and inspectors to enforce the law. It would take quite a lot of them, but you could do it. There are such people. I know about them because they’ve come after me.

My editor, Graydon Carter, the splendid editor of Vanity Fair, and I were having a cigarette in his office. And someone on our staff—it’s not very nice to think about it—was kind enough to drop a dime on us. And round the guys came. “You’re busted!” These people are paid by the city, which evidently has no better use for its police.

I think that’s bad enough. But then Graydon went on holiday, and I went back to Washington. And his office was empty. But they came round again and they issued him another ticket because he had on his desk an object that could have been used as an ashtray. In his absence. With no one smoking. But there are officials who have time enough to come round and do that.

The worst part is that the staff has to become the enforcers. The waitresses have to become the enforcers. The maitre d’ has to become the enforcer. He has to act as the mayor’s representative. Because it’s he who is going to be fined, not you. If you break the law in his bar, he is going to have to pay.

So everyone is made into a snitch. Everyone is made into an enforcer. And everyone is working for the government. And all of this in the name of our health.

Hitchens often said the public would be willing to vote for an atheist president, they just haven't been smitten by one yet. If asked, he continued, no one in the 1950's would say they'd vote for a "washed-up B-movie actor" because they hadn't met Ronald Reagan yet. With that in mind, I'm glad to see from the public outpouring that I'm not alone in my reverance for the passing of a godless chain-smoking combative anti-abortion bisexual warmongering rich white male immigrant socialist.

Tyler Cowen on food snobs

2011-12-14T22:59:00.009-05:00

I'm a big fan of economist Tyler Cowen, even though I have to overlook his embrace of the ugly term "foodie" which I associate with food snobbery. While I can't use his excellent ethnic dining guide of the Washington DC area directly, I have benefited from the universal advice on finding a good ethnic restaurant.

Cowen recently spoke with Freakonomic's Stephen Dubner about American food, foodies, and in particular why he's not a food snob.

Let me just give you a few traits of food snobs that I would differ from. First, they tend to see commercialization as the villain. I tend to see commercialization as the savior. Second, they tend to construct a kind of good versus bad narrative where the bad guys are agribusiness, or corporations, or something like chains, or fast food, or microwaves. And I tend to see those institutions as flexible, as institutions that can respond, and as the institutions that actually fix the problem and make things better. So those would be two ways in which I’m not-only not a food snob, but I’m really on the other side of the debate.

While I'm on the fence about Cowen being a food snob himself, he does hit home an important point: the people I associate as food snobs get tied up in shallow anti-capitalism and blatant conspicuous consumption.

Last night I made Swedish meatballs from an earl 1980's cookbook. Ingredients included standard ground beef, sour cream and bread crumbs made from a slice of cheap white bread. The tomatoes were the cheapest ones I could find and the egg noodles I served it on fell under the generic supermarket label.

The recipe even called for a packet of onion soup mix, so I wouldn't be able to say it was from scratch, if I cared about that sort of thing. I don't, and nothing was organic, locally-made or "fair trade."

It was a great dish, and not despite those details. Most of the details the food snobs spend so much money are simply irrelevant.

Local butter famine

2011-12-11T12:26:00.010-05:00

It's a tragic comedy when costly actions designed to help a situation only make it worse. Hat tip to Kevin "Angus" Grier for this most recent example, Norway's clunky tariffs combined with a new butter-heavy fad diet and lower milk production to create a massive butter shortage.

Localists talk about "food security," the idea that focusing on local food production will protect civilization from food shortages, contain outbreaks and save humanity when doomsday strikes and all interstate deliveries stop.

But instead of having food security, the protectionist policies have created a butter famine. Those same tariffs that block foreign goods with the intention of tilting the market in favor of local farmers is hurting the country. The Norwegians are experiencing food insecurity, as the only way the average person can obtain a basic food item like "smør" is through the Internet at a price around $13 for two sticks.

Clearly, the dairy farmers are making a mint right now, but it's at the expense of the general public. It takes a certain breed of ignorance to conclude that this is good for society.

Blocking foreign butter is hurting, not helping, the people of Norway. Just like insurance spreads risk among a large group of people, free trade spreads local shortages out among the entire world. Norway is not experiencing a butter famine because of low milk levels and a sudden high demand. Those two problems alone would hardly made a dent in the world butter market if the country embraced free trade.

If you want to make sure your local community has access to something as basic as butter, the last thing you want to do sign legislation to limit who the public can buy butter from.

What's the real Occupy theme song

2011-12-08T14:00:00.007-05:00

The band NOFX wrote a sympathetic anthem for the Occupy Wall Street movement, but the lyrics are the same old drivel. These platitudes don't cover what the movement is really about - a loose alliance of radical anti-capitalists and mainstream liberals so eager to protest a grab bag of progressive talking points that they're willing to tolerate law breaking.

"The Trees" by Rush is tempting. It's a metaphor for progressive "fairness" polices told through a group of trees that aren't getting enough sunlight because of the tall oaks.

So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
"These oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light"
Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw

The lyrics do a great job of showing how progressive economic policies end up destroying wealth, not simply redistributing it, and are inherently unfair. However, it's not targeted to protests and isn't specific enough to be considered a theme song for the Occupy organized trespassing movement.

This one is too easy and plenty of other people have made the connection for "Bang the Drum All Day" by Todd Rundgren. The lyrics don't matter because all everyone knows is the chorus:

I don't want to work
I want to bang on the drum all day

This one isn't fair. While the movement is maggoty with lazy non-stop drummers, it's not fair to say the core of the group doesn't want to work. Most of the protesters want to perform labor under a different economic system. Plenty of sympathetic college grads majored in "fun" things like literature or music that don't prepare them for obtainable careers and while they bear some responsibility for their foolishness, it's still hard to find work for everyone.

That's why I distance myself from other critics who say the protesters want the government to provide everything for them and just need to get a job. Most of them want to work and can't find it.

"Baby, I'm an Anarchist" by Against Me! is a radical protester telling a progressive that they may be on the same side of a few issues, but the progressive underestimates how extreme anarchist positions and tactics are and the two will never see eye to eye.

'Cause baby, I'm an anarchist
You're a spineless liberal
We marched together for the eight-hour day
And held hands in the streets of Seattle
But when it came time to throw bricks
Through that Starbucks window
You left me all alone (All alone)

This song plainly spells out to progressives that the anarchists don't respect them, don't believe the current system can be reformed and are eager to use violence. It'd a great choice for the movement's theme song, however a more fitting song exists.

"Anarchy means you litter" by Atom and His Package is the perfect song to criticize spoiled pre-packaged anarchists.

I got a patch. I got a pin
Obtained political beliefs from the same songs as my friends
I got a five finger discount to the little record store
It's easier to get the stuff I want out

And if you want fair compensation for the work that you do
Well then your greedy, get out, we have amazing names to call you
Ever think there's a difference who you're stealing from?
So, fine, I'm not punk and you are (a moron)

We're gonna tear this stupid city down
Throw our trash on the ground
Liberate that bottle of malt liquor!
Oh, I get it. Anarchy means that you litter (nice!)

So, if you're flying the flag, and you're naming the name
Then you're setting back the ones who know how to behave
It's a good thing this replenishes itself
Or who would be left to take advantage of your "help?"

Consider it a frustrated liberal speaking back to the clueless bomb throwers who learned everything they know from song lyrics and hurt their own allies.

Loyal readers, if you know of a more fitting song, please post it below.

ABC's "Made in America" series is a disgrace to journalism

2011-12-05T20:24:00.005-05:00

Just watch this, and in the event that the video doesn't work, just click here.

video platform video management video solutions video player

ABC news has abandoned journalistic neutrality and is trying to stir consumers up with a call for mercantilism. They are telling Americans that evil China is stealing jobs and the patriotic solution is simple and easy. If you know anything about international trade and protectionism, you will see these claims are a xenophobic swill of lies and ignorance.

Apparently, ABC was beating this drum last year, and I'm not the only one who had this reaction. Forbes contributor Dan Ikenson wrote "ABC is selling dangerous, nationalistic propaganda."

If you've read this blog for more than a month, you should recoil from lines like:

So after nearly a year of crisscrossing the country as part of our Made in America journey, we remembered what economists across the board told us at the very start: If every American spent $64 on something made in America, we could create 200,000 jobs right now.

In the four and a half minute video, these activists in journalists clothing referenced unnamed economists several times. They did not show an interview with a single economist or name one. Where do these numbers come from?

After sitting through a barrage of these awful clips, some of which include flag waving and rallies organized by ABC, I finally saw a vague attribution to Moody's Analytics that spending 18 cents a day would create 200,000 jobs. However, I have been unable to find the original source, even on Moody's website.

Since economists across the board reject this protectionist nonsense, I find it hard to believe. ABC has cherry-picked a minor report and used it to overturn economic science, and now they won't even cite the source and dishonestly present it as a scientific consensus. Shame on ABC for committing journalistic negligence and telling these nationalistic lies.

Should the government standardize codes?

2011-12-04T09:13:00.009-05:00

Yesterday I went on forestry management tour, where we saw how foresters choose which trees to preserve and which get the ax, and I ended up talking to a lefty about timber markings.

Foresters mark trees with paint or pieces of bright ribbon to identify the tree's fate with different symbols and colors. There is no universal code, so each company has its own language of timber marks.

This can cause problems like homeowners who panic and assume the "save this tree" mark means "turn me into a Jenga set" or laborers who misread the code and chop down trees that were supposed to stay up.

My new lefty friend instantly concluded the solution is for the government to draft and enforce a standardized code. I thought that would be a mistake.

Languages, such as codes, typically emerge through spontaneous order and sometimes we end up with redundancies. Boxes of chocolates have a squiggle code on top identifying the filling with lines of chocolate. Sorry Forrest, but you can know what you're going to get if you just learn to read.

The problem is the different chocolate companies have different squiggle codes. This is a coordination problem, but a small one. Workers sorting chocolates don't regularly bounce between companies and a forestry management company marks trees for repeat contractors who can learn the code. We can prosper with standardization.

Who says standardization depends on the governments help? Gay swingers developed a hanky code, where wearing a colored handkerchief in a certain pocket lets observers know what sexual acts the wearer is interested in. What regulatory jurisdiction would that fall under?

As a consumer, I see a problem with cell phone and laptop batteries being proprietary, where each model can have its own shape and there is no generic product to purchase. AA batteries are universal and interchangeable and their standardization is the result of the federal government working with battery manufacturers and major purchasers.

Since then, private industry has created standardization plenty of times. There's the Video Home Systems, the Compact Disc, the Digital Versatile Disc, the MPEG Audio Layer III, the Joint Photographic Experts Group, the Universal Serial Bus and the Blu-ray Disc. Standardization can occur

Sometimes, users don't want standardization. Linux and Mac users don't want to use the same operating system as Microsoft. Sometimes there are flaws in the accepted standard, and having options lets people choose the one they feel is right.

What if the government wrote a timber marking system that was problematic? If forestry companies were required by law, they could get in serious legal trouble just for using the best system. Imagine if we were required to speak Esperanto, the dismal failure that was designed to be a superior language. Its entirely possible the government could create a poor timber marking system that would handicap companies that adopt it.

I told new lefty friend that I'd be happy if there was a recommended universal timber marking system, and companies could ignore it at their own peril. To her credit, she agreed. If it's worth the trouble of switching over, firms will do so. There's no need to bring guns and the brute force of the law down on forestry companies that mark trees with one line instead of two.

I'm glad this gay rights video went viral

2011-12-01T20:18:00.005-05:00

About a year ago I criticized a video praising a teacher who punished a student for calmly expressing his rejection of gay rights during a class discussion. The video went viral as a celebration of gay rights, but I found it was unworthy as it championed an attack on free speech, no matter how well-intended.

Yesterday a friend posted a video titled "Zach Wahls Speaks About Family" where an accomplished college student from Iowa talks about his success after being raised by two women before the state legislature on a gay marriage vote.

I'm happy to say that the video has since gone viral, despite being available online since February.

Wahls defended the structure of his family and argued something I've only heard one place before, that gay marriage already exists, the legislation is just to get the government to admit it's there.

He said:

My family really isn’t so different from yours. After all, your family doesn’t derive its sense of worth from being told by the state: “You’re married. Congratulations.” No.

The sense of family comes from the commitment we make to each other. To work through the hard times so we can enjoy the good ones. It comes from the love that binds us. That’s what makes a family.

So what you’re voting here isn’t to change us. It’s not to change our families, it’s to change how the law views us; how the law treats us.

Two years ago I wrote on this blog:

With those two points in mind, we need to make sure our laws coincide with reality. Right now in Maine there are thousands of romance stories between people of the same gender that will be here on Nov. 4 no matter what the outcome.

In social circles, gay marriage already exists in Maine - it just hasn't been legally certified... The only difference is Augusta currently doesn't admit these romances exist, and the legal rights and responsibilities that come with marriage are not automatically included.

Congratulations to Mr. Wahls. His important message deserves to be heard by as many people as possible, and I'm glad to see that it's spreading. This is exactly the sort of message that should spread.

Occupy Maine: The honeymoon is over

2011-11-28T22:58:00.007-05:00

I visited Maine for Thanksgiving weekend and stopped by the Occupy protests in Augusta and Portland to spend some more time talking to the protesters about whats important to them.

The two Maine encampments were a stark contrast to the energetic Occupy Boston protest I visited when the movement was still young. The protesters seemed somewhat bored with the whole thing and perhaps resented the snow on the ground.

A substantial amount of the protesters focus has shifted from issues like income inequality and corporate personhood to the movement itself.

The first person I talked to at Occupy Augusta on Friday was Jarody, a tea party protester and former Republican candidate for the state house. When I asked him what are the important issues, he said the most important thing he cares about is that the Occupy movement is not hijacked by established political groups. That is to say, his primary interest in this protest is that he wants to participate in a protest with a degree of purity untouched by outsider organizations, or protesting for the sake of protesting as long as it's pure.

I also heard a lot of calls about free speech and the right to protest. Jarody and other protesters tried to dodge when I asked them about the legality of their tent city in the park and said they have a day-to-day understanding with the capital police. This is odd because the whole point is to illegally occupy land to attract attention, then play the victim card when police enforce the law.

They called a meeting while I was there with fellow bloggers Nate and Michael Hawkins announcing that capital police told them the eviction notice is coming Monday. The person leading the meeting, possibly named Lou, said he had been waiting five or six weeks to be arrested here, and the time was finally coming. He told the other members to call more people in to be arrested with them.

"They're be a lot of people coming here who will want to be arrested," he added. It reinforced my view that the left sees being arrested as a martyrdom, and uses these self-made martyrs to convince the gullible that the police are cracking down on them for their views, not for trespassing.

One person said during the meeting that if the police pepper spray him, he will spray them back. This person was clearly an idiot, and to the groups credit, the idiot was told he can't do that.

As of this time, Nate reports that the camp in Augusta is still around. Over the weekend nine people were arrested for hopping the fence of the governors mansion and stringing up a banner, but none of them were there Friday.

The protesters I talked to said if the police told them to leave or be pepper sprayed, they'd choose to be pepper sprayed.

One issue that united the 15 members of the Occupy Augusta was an opposition to genetically-modified food. They were picking at two roasted turkeys still sitting in their pans. One of them was filled with potatoes, mushrooms and onions (I assume it was a gluten-free attempt at stuffing) and it was obviously the cook's first bird: it was left sitting in two inches of congealed fat and the paper packet of internal organs was left inside when it was cooked.

The Augusta encampment had a teepee for sleeping in the center surrounded by smaller tents. The communal tent had brand-new metal shelves that organizes said were donated. There was a left-wing library, picnic tables, boxes of donated food and a few trays of loose tobacco for communal cigarettes. The system seemed to work, as there were only 15 people, but Nate said that number doubled to 30 when the police tried to clear it out today.

The most telling moment was when one of the protesters gave a long pour of table salt into a big cup, then came back a minute later to pour more and walked away. I said to Jarody, he's not salting the walkway with that, is he?

Jarody looked at me with wide eyes and said "Someone needs to stop him!"

I had a good time talking to the protesters in Boston and Augusta. I didn't enjoy the protest in Portland, known as Occupy Maine, when I stopped by Saturday at noon time.

I saw a group of about half a dozen people sitting lazily around a picnic table. No one was talking about I sat down with them and said I was a blogger originally from the area who wants to know what issues are important to them. One person asked what town I was from and then there was a big pause.

A wrinkled woman around age 60 glared at me and said I was being rude. She said I was interrupting them and went on (rudely) and insisted they were in the middle of talking. They weren't, but there's no point in arguing with crusty old hippies. I told the group that they're here to protest and identifying the issues they're protesting should be something they want to do.

I ended up talking to a young woman named Jenna, who was just there for the weekend. Jenna insisted the most Americans quality of life and standard of living had been dropping since the 1970s because of the rise in things like health care costs.

She said she knows it sounds crazy to say she's anti-capitalist, but wants to replace capitalism with a different economic system, although she said she doesn't know what to replace it with.

Another of her points was that the strength of the movement comes from not having a list of demands. She said she'd rather see a revolution that be promised demands that will never come.

That was all I was able to get out of the Portland group. I later learned why they've been on edge. The week before one of their members had attacked a critic, and two others choked and bludgeoned a third member for banging a drum at 7 a.m. On Thursday Jason Carr, the one who assaulted someone for disagreeing with their message as he tried to leave, was arrested again for domestic violence in the camp. A couple was also arrest for hitting one another and a third person was arrested for disorderly conduct.

One of my friends has been an organizers there from the start and he looked exhausted. After a quick talk he expressed frustration with running the group, which he said was like herding cats.

Breakfast Pie

2011-11-25T08:11:00.004-05:00

I don't want to steal Larry David's shtick, but there's no logical reason why the slice of leftover lemon meringue pie I had this morning is any less a legitimate breakfast item than a lemon jelly doughnut.

And in the same vein, leftover birthday cake is as legitimate a breakfast item as coffee cake. I'm not sure about cheesecake and cheese danishes. That issue requires more (delicious) research.

Why skeptics should consider libertarianism

2011-11-22T11:28:00.006-05:00

The skeptical community is roughly 70 percent progressive and 30 percent libertarian, at least according to an informal poll at TAM 7. While that's nowhere close to a majority, it's two to three times larger than the American public at large and I think it should be higher.

Last week it came out that the European Union prevented a bottled water company from putting a statement on their product that said water helps prevent dehydration. Their academic panel spent three long years on the case and declared that since pure water isn't the only way to prevent dehydration, the claim is misleading and can not be printed.

Dr. Steven Novella, arguably the most prominent skeptic in New England, verified the story and wrote yesterday:

My fear is that this sensational event will create a public backlash against regulatory agencies reviewing health claims by product manufacturers. This is a dramatic and emotional case that can have undue influence on what should be a thoughtful and nuanced discussion about the proper role of regulation in health claims. I suspect the anti-regulation crowd will jump all over it.

Well, here I am. It's not that I'm against all regulation, I just want less of it. I even support regulation to stop fraudulent claims on products, which is exactly what this case was supposed to be about.

But unlike my friends and fellow skeptics on the left, I know the regulations tend to end up grotesque and flawed. I want fewer regulations because there is no reason to expect the regulations will be based on the best knowledge available and with the public interest in mind.

As Friedrich Hayek wrote in The Road to Serfdom:

"...We all think that our personal order of values is not merely personal but that in a free discussion among rational people we would convince the others that ours is the right one."

Progressive skeptics assume they will be the ones who write the regulations simply because the science is on their side. Granted, it usually is, but that's a naive way to look at the political process.

Remember corn-based ethanol? The government funneled taxpayer money to big corn producers to convert their food product into fuel. We quickly learned that the fuel is inferior and harms engines, there is no net energy gain from all the fossil fuels we put into ethanol and the corn shortage caused mass starvation in other countries. Corn-based ethanol is a bad idea and the public turned against it, yet the subsidies remain.

And why wouldn't they? The corn industry has a lot of money to spend protecting these subsidies, where the public's benefit is spread among many people. It's the old political game of dispersed costs and concentrated benefits.

I'd love to ban homeopathic products for claiming they can heal people, but fighting that battle is a waste of my time. I gain very little waging that war, where the sham medicine companies have a lot to lose and will spend a lot of money protecting their business interests. That's why I concentrate my efforts on convincing potential consumers.

Skeptics assume that merely being right will guarantee victory in a political system run by people. Yet skeptics understand that most people aren't relentless critical thinkers and will believe myths and fables, including the people likely to be elected. There is no reason to believe the people they appoint to a position will be the brightest, most competent, or share the same love of science.

Look at Orac's ongoing posts about defunding the NCCAM, the federal governments alt medicine $121 million annual laboratory. I've written about defunding it too, but I know that's not going to happen with our government.

When lefties talk about regulation, it's in a state of perfection. They assume the regulators will have perfect knowledge and constantly update the regulations to the latest scientific understanding. They forget about unintended consequences, such as forming a board to stop soda companies from saying their product cures cancer only to have that same board declare that water doesn't prevent dehydration.

Free market philosopher Milton Friedman saw government interference like regulation as coercion and said:

“I have no right to coerce someone else because I cannot be sure that I am right and he is wrong.”

Skepticism is a process of discovery, it is not a set of positions one takes. With a hands-off approach to government, I would have better control over how much of my money goes to chiropractors or homeopaths. Under current federal regulation, all health insurance policies must offer chiropractic options. Our private actions also respond faster to new information than it takes to write new government policies.

The comparison should not be between no regulation and perfect regulation, but a different society that adjusts to having fewer regulations and a world with many imperfect regulations that solve some problems and cause new ones. While I don't expect all skeptics to switch camps, I'd like them to consider being more libertarian in their approach.

I told you so

2011-11-19T20:45:00.007-05:00

Last month I wrote:

The left has this habit of trying to get arrested, then looking at the arrests as a noble sacrifice and proof that the police are thugs. That doesn't mean that police never brutalize protesters, of course, but the protesters aren't always the victims they claim to be.

Yesterday at U.C. Davis trespassing protesters dug themselves in so police couldn't pull them apart and were told they would be pepper sprayed if they didn't disperse. You can guess what happened next.

Now left is are up in arms about police brutality, excessive force and freedom of speech - concepts they clearly don't understand. If you break the law and dare the police to enforce it, they will enforce it. It is an automated response, like pressing a button.

Non-gifted Associate Professor of English Nathan Brown penned a rambling letter calling for the university chancellor to resign for calling the police to remove the tresspassers. He offers this

The fact is: the administration of UC campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize students and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly.

Here's my open letter to Nathan Brown:

Sir, you do not understand freedom of speech. With some narrow exceptions, the content of speech can not be censored. There are, however, limitations on time and place speech can be expressed as long as they are content-neutral. One can not hold a protest that blocks the lanes of an interstate highway, for example.

It doesn't matter if the protesters were non-violent, they were illegally "occupying" space they were not allowed to be. They linked their bodies in a way that made it impossible for the police to pull them apart without using something like pepper spray.

If the police catch me robbing a bank while singing "Born to Run," the police are not suppressing Bruce Springsteen music. Likewise, when people - students, kids, veterans or whatever kind of people they are - illegally trespass, it doesn't matter to the police why they are doing it. The police will use force before they'll tolerate law breaking.

And you knew this. Next time you feel like organizing a protest where participants break the law and dare the police to pepper spray them, I expect to see you on the front line.

-Michael

This is a bait-and-switch routine. The protesters break a law and act as if the police are after them for their beliefs. Anyone who believes this narrative is a sucker.

Can we find a definition of rich and stick with it?

2011-11-16T23:50:00.011-05:00

This morning on NPR, Fresh Air host Terry Gross brought on guest Tim Dickinson who recently wrote an opinion piece in Rolling Stone masquerading as a news article on how American tax policy drives inequality.

Dickinson omitted a few pesky facts that challenged his thesis. Here's part of the exchange:

Terry Gross: "Have taxes become less progressive in the past few decades? And by progressive, I mean the idea that the more money you make the higher level you're taxed?"

Tim Dickinson: "The most important place where that's true is with investment income. In the tax reform of 1986, Ronald Reagan brought the top marginal tax rate down to 28 percent, which is far below where it is today, but he also brought the capital gains tax up to match it."

You see what he did? She asked him if taxes are less progressive, and his answer was to say they are in one narrow aspect. This misleads the listener into believing that taxes are less progressive in all aspects.

Dickinson's answers use a common trick people make when they barrage you with economic data to prove a point: they keep changing the parameters of the concept they are talking about. In this case, it's what group is counted as rich. In my last post, I showed how even when you include capital gains and dividends as income and factor in loopholes, the top 1 percent pays the highest tax rate in the nation, projected at 33.8 percent this year.

The Occupy Wall Street crowd set the line at the top 1 percent, and the interview starts with that parameter, but then Dickinson moves the goalpost to the top 10 percent. Then when he wants to make the point that rich people pay a lower tax rate, he moves it again to the top 400 earners with their tax average rate of about 17 percent.

He's not alone. Sometimes the line is moved to the top 0.1 percent. Irregardless, while there are a few anecdotal examples of rich people that have found a way to pay a lower tax rate, you have to leave out a lot of multi-millionaires to concoct a definition of "rich" that pays a lower tax rate on average. It's no different than holding up a handful of welfare cheats as proof that all people on government assistance are scammers.

The rich have received tax reductions in recent years, but so has everyone else. Some lefties like to point out that the top federal marginal tax rate in 1963 was 91 percent, but what they don't realize is that the lowest tax bracket at that point - the poorest of the poor - had to pay 20 percent. Please don't take my word for it, scroll through the numbers for yourself. You can go back to 1954 and see those same extremes were the same for everyone.

For comparison, In 2001 the lowest tax bracket was 15 percent and the villainous Bush Tax Cuts brought it down to 10 percent.

In the interest of fairness, if you want a further historical perspective, 1913 had 1 percent tax for the lowest and a 7 percent tax for the highest and by 1918 the poor had a 6 percent tax while the highest marginal bracket was 77 percent. Taxes have been all over the place and while one can argue they're not as progressive as they were in 1918, they're certainly more progressive than they were in the last 60 years the spotlight is focused on.

Dickinson must have done a lot of digging through the data, so he knew how much more progressive taxes are today than in the last 60 years. The way he worded his answer shows that he deliberately altered his definition of rich to focus on the top 400 to a prove his point - a point that is completely reversed when the data set is expanded.

Taxes are progressive enough

2011-11-13T19:56:00.013-05:00

There is a lie being repeated that America has a regressive tax system, that the rich pay a lower percentage of their wealth than the middle class. Instead, we have a progressive tax system that has done a great job of keeping inequality in check.

As I've said before, there's nothing wrong with inequality. What we should focus on is the well-being of the poor, and the poor in America enjoy a high standard of living.

The recent Bruce Meyer episode of Econtalk made a compelling point that inequality is much lower than the pundits claim because they are merely looking at pre-tax income. Once you factor in taxes, consumer spending and government assistance programs like the earned income tax credit you see a much different picture observe.

Both the left and the right make the mistake of focusing on the top tax bracket in the past, which was higher than it is today, but affected few people. A much larger percentage of our federal taxes paid by the wealthy, and it's not just because they have more of the wealth. We are seeing lower taxes for the poor and middle class.

Enter Warren Buffet and the claim that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary, whose income was never identified. He claimed he paid 17.4 percent while everyone else in his office pays 31 to 44 percent. Greg Mankiw said that isn't even true, but let's play along and say it is.

Is it fair for members of the left to use him as an example to "prove" that the rich pay a lower tax rate, like "Bob" did in an exchange we had in a comment section at For The Sake of Science last month? People rightly claim that taxpayers are able to use loopholes and write-offs to reduce their tax bill, and the rich have access to smart accountants who can exploit them, so could this stymie the progressiveness of the official tax rates?

The good news is that the hard data says otherwise. Using Warren Buffett as an anecdotal example is misleading, as we can see by looking at the effective federal tax rate that compares what people actually pay in taxes to their incomes. Here's what the Congressional Budget Office projected for this year:

It's plain to see that in reality, the five different quintiles fall neatly in line, with the top 1 percent that gets so much focus today paying the highest at 33.8 percent. It is a lie to say the rich pay less of a percentage of taxes than anyone else.

All is not lost for the left. They could simply abandon this bogus claim of a regressive tax system and instead focus on the gains that have come through lowering taxes for the poor and middle class and various "redistribution" programs like the earned income tax credit. That would allow them to sleep better at night instead of, in the words of Michael Munger, elevating the sin of envy to a virtue.

Why I support corporate personhood

2011-11-10T21:40:00.001-05:00

Imagine a caveman wakes up in the modern world, sees a television for the first time and smashes it with the first object he can lay hands on. He doesn't know anything about it, but assumes it's a threat and feels compelled to destroy it.

That sums up the young lefts view of corporate personhood. People with no understanding of business law have taken it upon themselves to edit the constitution to strike at firms they see as their enemies, but don't realize how savage their actions really are.

The point of a corporation is to create a legal entity that can own property, has its own debts and can spend its resources. It is, in essence, a stand-in for a group of people. It is not, as critics like to remind us, an actual person, but that doesn't mean corporations don't deserve rights.

From a 2011 Cato Institute paper by Iila Shapiro and Caitlyn W. McCarthy:

...If corporations had no Fourth Amendment rights, the police could storm corporate offices and cart off computers and files for any or no reason. If corporations had no Fifth Amendment rights, the mayor of New York could exercise eminent domain over Rockefeller Center by fiat and without compensation if he decides he’d like to move his office there.

...When rights-bearing individuals associate to better engage in a whole host of constitutionally protected activity, their constitutional rights remain fully intact. These individuals do not lose their right to speak or act simply because they chose to exercise those rights by pooling their resources in a corporate form.

The targeted constitutional right that activists want to take away from corporations is freedom of speech, following last year's Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission.

As retired ACLU executive director Ira Glasser carefully explained, the case did not allow corporations to make unlimited campaign contributions like the left claims. Instead, it ended a stupid censorship ban that protected politicians from being criticized by corporations or unions around elections. This was a victory over censorship.

Glasser addressed another issue the left likes to make, that the wealth corporations command could allow them to drown out all other speech, so the government needs to cap what they can say. He wrote:

The inequities of speech that flow from the inequities of wealth are certainly a big and distorting problem for a democracy, and have always been so, and not just during elections. No one knows how to remedy that, short of fundamental re-distributions of wealth. But I'll tell you what isn't a remedy: granting the government the power to decide who should speak, and how much speech is enough. Nothing but disaster flows from that approach, and that was what was at stake in this case.

This idea of leveling the playing field for speech belongs in Harrison Bergeron's dystopia. If an entity's speech is too persuasive because of its reach, scope or volume, why not censor speakers who are skilled at attracting large audiences or making compelling arguments? Free speech does not need government oversight, and the ACLU has consistently supported corporate speech rights, despite left-wing campaigns that try to pressure them into switching sides.

Without free speech, corporations would be handicapped in trying to defend themselves in the public arena. Suppose a large group of naturalists starts a campaign that Acme widgets cause cancer, and have no scientific basis for this claim. What happens now? The activists get in the press, they talk to other people and they may be allowed to pass out their literature in classrooms.

But the corporation isn't a real person, so it needs to spend money in its own defense to speak. Perhaps science-based speakers will call the activists on their nonsense, but should Acme have to wait around hoping for good Samaritans? Why prevent it from launching a similar campaign to correct the lie using its own resources?

As my fellow defenders have been quick to point out, many groups the left loves are corporations who enjoy free speech. There's the ACLU, Media Matters, the Daily KOS, MSNBC, NORML MoveOn.org and the transparently-named Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Once again, members of the American left are on the wrong side of a freedom of speech issue. Censorship harms the potential listener, not just the thwarted speaker, and adults don't need a moderator to decide who they can listen to.

What is it you don't understand about journalistic neutrality?

2011-11-07T20:29:00.006-05:00

As a practicing journalist, there are strict rules I must follow for the purpose of neutrality. I can not publicly endorse political candidates, parties or movements. I can't march in a protest or place campaign bumper stickers on my car.

It's not just politics. Earlier this year I was invited to join Rotary International, and I knew I had to turn it down. My editor confirmed this; it would be a public endorsement of the group and I wouldn't be able to cover its events with what appears to be a fair viewpoint.

Like all conflict of interest issues, it's not a matter of if I could remain neutral. It's a matter of the mere appearance of neutrality.

I don't like labor unions at all. I interviewed the fire fighter's union rep in a recent story then saw him at a scene a few days after it was printed. I asked him how it came out and if I represented his side fairly, and it felt genuinely good when he said I nailed it. Clearly, I have some ability to set my views aside.

But how would he have read it if he knew I think his organization is a labor cartel that conspires to take advantage of the public with oligarchy power, fearmongering and flawed reasoning? His interpretation of my wording may have changed and the same story would have angered him. My paper's reputation would have been damaged.

That's why we have rules, you see. It's easy to understand. As a journalist, I give up certain rights in order to do my job correctly. It's not a legal requirement, it's a performance requirement, and I agreed to it when I chose this line of work.

But Caitlin Curran, activist and freelancer for a show broadcast on NPR, doesn't understand this basic journalistic rule. She got caught protesting in Occupy Wall Street, tried to turn it into a story and got fired for it. She did not, however, learn anything from the experience, as can be demonstrated by her dishonest statements in an interview with Bob Garfield from On The Media.

Curran's silly defense, which Garfield did not let her get away with, was that:

*She just wanted to check it out.

*She wasn't really participating.

*She only held the sign for a little while.

*Her political sign wasn't political.

*Occupy Wall Street isn't political.

*This happened in her personal time.

*The rule is wrong and journalists should be able to express their views in public.

Curran just doesn't get it, and from the comments section in the liberal blogosphere, a lot of other people don't get it either. I can see a minor defense against a similar incident when the host of an opera show was eighty-sixed for being an anti-war spokeswoman. It's not as blatantly wrong as what Curran did, but once again, the sympathetic far left Internet squad just doesn't get it.

I have to walk a fine line. I was a newspaper editor in 2008 and the beginning of 2009 and some of my editorials are online. I was also the op/ed editor of my college newspaper my senior year and some of my political articles from that time are still online. My political views can be tracked down.

But I still make an effort. I was the president of a skeptics group when I was between journalism jobs and now that I'm working again, I'm not a member of any of them. I told my editor when I was offered a position to speak at TAM 9 and he gave me his blessing. Even still, I follow a strict policy about what I do, what I say and what I post here on YH&C.

I fully believe that I can write fairly on topics despite having a lot of strong views. The trouble is convincing my readers that I can pull it off. That's beyond my control, and that's why the proper thing to do is to keep them guessing.

As a journalist, I keep a single allegiance in mind. It's not to the politicians I interview. It's not to the publication that prints my words, nor is it to the public that reads what I wrote. My loyalty is to the truth; the actual events that occur in the world. It's not to any other idea or entity. Anything less is a betrayal of reality.

Idiot Hunting OWS

2011-11-05T22:16:00.011-04:00

The squirmy nature of Occupy Wall Street makes fair criticism a difficult task. Because there's no official list of demands, critics can pick the views expressed by the stupidest supporters and go to town on them, as if that disproves the entire movement.

I don't want to break my own rule on idiot hunting and prop up the ignorant as living straw men to dismantle. That's too easy.

For example, early on everyone was looking for a list of official demands and a list from the official website got passed around. Now it has a snarky introduction saying it's a forum post, not an official list. The intro criticizes people who interpreted the list as official, but the web design was so poor that it was impossible tell it was a forum post. It said it was a real list.

The list featured some silly ideas like declaring a minimum wage of $20 an hour, making huge government programs, canceling all student debt and outlawing credit reporting agencies. I could snap these ideas apart in my sleep, but that doesn't actually prove anything.

The real ideas to target are the calls to end corporate personhood, increase regulations and lower the income gap. That is real engagement and the only way to seriously combat this movement is to strike its strongest points. Kicking infants doesn't prove anything.

I've been more than fair in making the distinction between the violent bomb-throwing anarchists who started the protests from the liberal supporters who tolerate them. I personally wouldn't want to support a movement that overlooks calls for violence and illegal behavior, but that's their mistake to make.

It's also hard to make criticisms of the idiots stick, as the movement is so fragmented most supporters will just say they don't believe in that idea or move the goalpost to another issue if they do. Idiot hunting won't defeat OWS.

I will, however, mock stupid ideas when they make their way to the front of the pack. Take the idiot who left a cushy tenured position in the NYC school department to get a masters degree in puppets. He wanted to get an extra $10,000 annually by exploiting the salary guidelines, but the job was gone when he finished playing with puppets.

This person is clearly a fool, not a victim, and it would be pure idiot hunting to single him out as a typical Occupy Wall street protester. That is, it would be if The Nation hadn't done just that in a sympathetic piece written by their executive web editor.

It's not idiot hunting when the claim makers are the ones propping them up as a fair example. The Nation is about as disinterested and seperate from this movement as Nintendo Power is from Nintendo. This is completely fair game.

He thought he could use the teacher salary guidelines as a loophole to make an extra $10,000 a year with the puppets at the public's expense. That is, he got greedy, took a risky venture that backfired and now wants us to bail him out. As Angus put it:

If you decide to "pursue your passion" in an un-economic area, don't be surprised when the economic system doesn't value you highly, and don't think that the problem is the system; the problem is you.

Christ. Puppets? What an idiot.

OWS fails to protest Greg Mankiw

2011-11-02T11:30:00.005-04:00

I thought the theme of Occupy Someplace protesters was to stand around somewhere you're not supposed to be and dare the police to remove you, then complain about the police department's use of force.

Today Occupy Boston tried to do the opposite and get Greg Mankiw's entire Ec 10 class to walk out on him at 12:15 p.m. In an open letter, an organizer claimed the introductory course doesn't teach the type of economics they like.

A legitimate academic study of economics must include a critical discussion of both the benefits and flaws of different economic simplifying models. As your class does not include primary sources and rarely features articles from academic journals, we have very little access to alternative approaches to economics. There is no justification for presenting Adam Smith’s economic theories as more fundamental or basic than, for example, Keynesian theory.

What a ridiculous thing to say. Adam Smith is indeed the foundation of modern economics, and I imagine a low-level biology class treats Charles Darwin the same way and a creationist would try to cite a lack of academic journals in an argument for teaching rib-based origins. Someone else has written a more in-depth take down of this silly accusation, so I will outsource that aspect of my post.

I imagine this protest has little to do with the declared motivation and is really about his role as an economic advisor in the Bush administration and some of his mocking posts about the movement and challenges to their assumptions.

Regardless, the protest was a flop, as only five to 10 percent of the class participated, and that was offset by former students who occupied the class in support of Mankiw.

As Tyler Cowen wrote today, "OWS supporters should be embarrassed by this garbage behavior." They won't. Add this to the long list of shameful actions protesters have committed and moderate supporters have overlooked.

These moderate supporters, who I have gone to great lengths to distinguish from the bomb throwers, do not have clean hands. They are holding hands with violent thugs and have been cheering protesters on to resist when police try to remove them for trespassing. This is essentially taunting the police to enforce the law.

The moderates celebrated when New York police decided against enforcing the evacuation of the park, but when Oakland police used force they carried on the liar's cry of victimhood. Now that has spiraled into shutting down the Oakland port, and they still haven't lost the support of the herbivores.

Greg Mankiw has said he considers himself a diplomat of the economic literature to his students, and his goal is to share what major economists have discovered even if he doesn't agree with it. It's a shame that with the ignorance of these protesters, the one place they aren't willing to occupy is an economics class.

Welcome aboard Julian, person number 7 billion

2011-10-31T23:28:00.001-04:00

Last week my friend Dylan wrote, "We're about to reach 7 billion beautiful human beings on this planet."

Well put, old bean.

This week the estimates finally added up to 7 billion. Humanity has reached an amazing milestone, but all I can hear on the subject is the familiar cry of the doomsayer. Harold Camping is a nut for making his Biblical prediction that the world would end earlier this month, but the people claiming 7 billion is too many get a pass in polite society.

It's been 200 years since Malthus predicted the world would be crushed under the weight of human beings, and the cranks just keep delaying the date every generation. People like Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren should be court jesters or lead around on a leash, not placed in academia or made presidential science advisers.

There's no way to know who this 7 billionth person really is, so I will refer to him as "Julian" after economist Julian Simon . The doomsayers believe that people will keep eating resources at a constant rate until the supplies run out, then starve. They have not considered that as a resource runs low, the price will rise and people will be forced to reduce consumption and look for alternatives.

We will not stop at 7 billion. The United Nations predicts the human population will peak at 11 billion in 2050 and then fall. I wish to challenge that view.

As long as we have science and reason, as long as we have innovation and discovery, we will continue along our path of finding new ways to make life better for the many people of this glorious world. We can all live longer, fuller lives, and what's more, I think we will.

I welcome Julian to our world with open arms and I hope to live to see another 7 billion standing next to him.

Lying about police brutality

2011-10-28T22:06:00.002-04:00

I'm trying to understand what the left thinks of police officers, and it doesn't make sense

One minute the police are hardworking union members. They are public servants who hold society together, and it's a scandal that Republicans and Tea Party members want to reduce or restrain taxes and risk putting them out of work.

The next minute the police are evil thugs who make unprovoked attacks on innocent protesters. These police officers can't stand the anti-rich and pro-union statements the peaceful Occupy Wall Street and anti-globalization protesters make and assault them.

For some reason, those same police officers don't get in fights with the low-tax anti-union right wing protesters. These same protesters who want to reduce the benefits of public employees, such as for the police department, are never brutalized.

I understand that there's a diversity of opinion on the left, and individual progressives should not be expected to hold views consistent with every other leftist.

But the logic still doesn't make sense if you believe the fable that modern American police are fascist thugs who make a habit of attacking left wing protesters. The simple answer is the protesters are lying.

We already know Occupy Wall Street is filled with people who want to smash things and fight the police. A third in a recent poll said they believe in violence to advance their goals. There's no great mystery here, the protesters are causing violence and then pretending to be the victims.

That's the cost of destruction, someone's got to lose

2011-10-25T12:07:00.002-04:00

Dorian Electra, the same singer-songwriter who brought us I'm in Love with Friedrich Hayek last year has brought us a song about Keynes, and it's not a love letter.

This second song is a departure from the rap genre for Keynes vs. Hayek music and it may open the door for others. I'm waiting for Merle Hazzard to record a Marty Robbins-style gunfighter ballad between the two gentlemen from Europe.

I was wrong

2011-10-22T00:56:00.001-04:00

There's a lot of fun things going on with the Transportation Security Authority - "fun" being a synonym for a farcical horrors - from yet another case of TSA agents going mad with their moderate amount of power to a satirical Playmobil Security Check Point playset posted on Amazon.com All of this has caused me dig up a post I wrote almost a year ago.

I predicted that the public outcry would continue to rise on the Sophie's Choice scenario the TSA was giving passengers of being felt up or photographed with an 80's teen movie clothing-penetrating nudie camera. Public opinion would cascade into people finally evaluating the trade-off between security and freedom, and the public would finally stand up and say the terrible cost does not justify the limited benefit and self-interested politicians would cave and interfere.

What happened instead was, nothing.

Nothing has changed, we're just where we were a year ago. Members of the general public have now absorbed the phrase "security theater" into their vocabularies and understand that a lot of these civil right violations give us no actual increases to security in return.

I still have a month to go from a full year when I made the prediction, but I'm calling it here. We're going to be stuck with this, and it'll get worse before it gets better.

Inside an anarchism convention

2011-10-19T22:04:00.006-04:00

I'm finally getting around to expanding on my "Knee-deep in subculture" tag where I record my observations from interactions with various groups, which so far includes yoga hippies and the Occupy Boston protest.

In January 2008, I attended a free weekend anarchism convention in downtown Portland Maine that was promoted on an acquaintance's MySpace page. I wanted to hear what they were all about, as I was still somewhat new to calling myself a libertarian and expected to find a lot of common ground.

I was completely wrong about that.

I was also completely wrong in my jokes that an anarchist convention would be fatally disorganized. There was about 40 of us sitting close together on the carpet while the organizers spent more than an hour explaining the rules for us. The weirdest one was how we were to use "caususes" in case we belong to minority groups that are offended and wanted to pause the meeting.

For example, if someone said something about gays that a gay person didn't like, they could pause everything like a Zack Morris "Time Out." All the gays would discuss the issue outside while everyone else waited in silence until the gay caucus came back in and presented their findings. Fortunately, that never actually happened.

We were told to introduce ourselves by our names, why we were there and what gender of pronoun we preferred. Seriously.

I made no attempt to infiltrate the group as a rebel. I wore a tie while everyone else was in gutterpunk garb. Most of the attendees were in their teens or early twenties and there was one bearded elder who attended Woodstock and never hatched from his tie-dye cocoon.

The discussions were like a pageant for who could display the most economic ignorance. I quickly learned the difference between individual anarchism, the kind I was hoping to hear about, and collective anarchism, which is just ho-hum anti-capitalism, anti-corporation, anti-globalization Marxist opium dreams. There was applause when someone talked about their "vote for no one" campaign, which included putting signs around town that said "Don't vote, they're all Nazis".

Everyone spoke starry-eyed about the concept of "rising up," where the general public would become swayed to their side and overthrow the system from the inside. No one offered example of this actually happening. I repeatedly heard people say that graffiti messages would help the public learn and appreciate their political messages. During a workshop on how to get Bank of America to stop loaning money to companies that perform mountaintop removal mining, one girl suggested that they go into a Bank of America branch and smoke a bunch of cigarettes to mimic air pollution, and this would cause the employees to rise up and change the company from the inside.

This suggestion received a ton of applause, and no one questioned that giving low-level bank clerks a tough time is going to sway them to your side, and even if it did, how that would translate to changes in corporate policy.

To their credit, activists from Earth First! had a good understanding of focusing on cause and effect to achieve their goals, instead of just feel-good public spectacles. They lead a discussion on spiking trees to stop logging companies. Someone in the audience spoke up about how tree spiking poses bodily risk to the laborers and they were immediately shushed by everyone else. An Earth Firster said they were just talking about effectiveness of the tactic now, and would discuss the ethics of it later. That discussion never happened, as should be expected.

After a free lunch of vegan-friendly food swiped from dumpsters, everyone started talking about how they were going to stop the "Iron Sea." This sounded menacing, and I finally asked what it was.

It turned out to be the upcoming 2008 Republican National Convention, or RNC. We broke into groups to brainstorm ways to disrupt the RNC, and everyone submitted illegal ideas like sabotaging the bus system and blocking the streets to keep people from attending the convention. It was clear the spirit of democracy was absent.

I learned that anarchist protesters divide themselves into different sections depending on their rioting preferences. Non-violent people will be in one place and those who want to assault the police and burn cars go elsewhere. They have "medics" with red cross decorations to help get pepper spray out of rioters eyes and they get free legal help from the National Lawyer's Guild activist group.

This should sound familiar with anyone who read the Occupy Boston post I made last week when I interviewed Mark. The same breed of violent protesters are intertwined with the gentle reformers of Occupy Wall Street, and I don't think enough supporters realize who they're marching with.

The anarchists were not the least bit shy about talking about these intentions to commit violent crimes. I was a clean-cut guy in a tie and vest who was taking notes and they still spoke about openly about terrorizing political rivals. These groups start riots and when they get arrested they lie to the public and say they were peaceful protesters who were attacked by evil police.

There are anarchists who don't participate in violence, but they are still willing to work with the bomb-throwers. Tolerance of evil is corrupting. I think it's telling that they claim the police are Nazi-like thugs, but a lot of their tactics depend on the police respecting their civil liberties, like chaining their hands together in tubes or tying themselves to buildings. How would it have gone if a group had chained itself to the gates of Auschwitz?

I'm not sure if anyone from the convention was part of a group of masked rioters arrested at the Republican National Convention for the usual stuff: fighting police, burning cars and macing old women. The local alternative weekly repeated all the usual lies in support of the rioters, and then praised them when a judge threw out the case because their masks spoiled photographic evidence.

This is what I've been trying to warn my liberal friends about when they say they support the Occupy Wall Street movement and tolerate the extremists inside. Anarchists are brutes who want to violently overthrow the country, and they have murdered people on Wall Street before. I've seen masked men in Boston with my own eyes and I can't overlook the threat they represent. These people want blood, not reform, and I have trouble seeing how anyone could justify having them as allies.

Procedural liberalism requires consistency

2011-10-16T21:15:00.006-04:00

I've been reading about "procedural liberalism" and the idea that all members of a just society must play by the rules, and I'm having trouble reconciling this with the actions and philosophy of the American left.

As I wrote last time, some members of the left purposely break the law to get arrested, then present themselves as martyrs. If you trespass while shouting to legalize human-onion marriage, you are not a victim of interkingdom romance puritanism. Your freedom of speech has not been trampled. You are simply someone who tried to hang out where they're not allowed to hang out.

"I Am Not Moving" is the title of the obnoxious video comparing Occupy Wall Street protesters to Arab Spring protesters, which is like comparing George of the Jungle to Tarzan. Despite this stern title, when you violate a no-trespass order and the blue-shirted union workers with black boots and billy clubs come for you, you are in fact moving.

If you supporting breaking the law as part of a protest, from mild civil disobedience to property destruction and rioting, then you can no longer claim to be a procedural liberal. My point is not that something is immoral or bad because the legislature had declared it illegal - Bryan Caplan has already destroyed that view - but that once you've thrown that out the window, you have lost all claim to the philosophy of respecting fair procedures.

Not that the left has any claim to greater respect for the rule of law or fair procedures. Former President George W. Bush certainly broke his share of laws, but President Barack Obama instructed the Justice Department not to defend a law he doesn't like. Sure, that law was a federal ban on gay marriage, but that's not the way we do things here. The correct answer to bad legislature is to change it, not break it or ignore it.

The reason we should follow written legislation is that it is a contract of rules to follow. I don't like our strict immigration laws and I want to see them relaxed, but I can't find myself getting worked up because a public school wants to only accept pupils that are legal residents, or a police agency wants to check if a suspect was violating immigration laws. The government should be bound to follow the law.

Procedural liberalism is lumped in with concepts the left claims to hold a monopoly on, like fairness and justice. They want no such things. To the left, fairness means handicapping someone who plays by the rules.

If a white male student works and studies hard, affirmative action proponents say he should have a tougher time getting into a particular college than a black student. This is being purposely unfair to individuals to attempt to create fairness in totality. They assume they have overcome the Hayekian knowledge problem and have perfect information so they can balance the scales flawlessly. In fact, they throw out the natural fairness of the world and impose a flawed attempt at artificial fairness. Neither approach is actually fair, but one incorrectly claims to be.

The same thing carries over to wealth "redistribution," limiting corporate speech, eminent domain and retroactively banning Wall Street bonuses from bailout money. People have a nasty habit of supporting the rules when it suits them, and abandoning them when they don't. The right is just as guilty of this, but it never branded itself the defender of fairness.

You can't claim to be a defender of consistent procedures and equal observation of the rules and still break the law when it helps your political goals. That is the mark of barbarism, not liberty. It's entirely possible that there are members of the left who reject law-breaking protests, inconsistent judicial actions and the handicapping of the innocent, but they have been drowned out by the rest.

Conversations with Occupy Boston

2011-10-13T22:58:00.006-04:00

Because the Occupy Wall Street movement is leaderless and does not fall behind a single cohesive message, nearly every conversation about it devolves into discussing what the real purpose of movement is.

So last weekend, I headed out to Boston to talk with the Occupy Boston protesters in person to see what its all about. I wanted to base my opinion on my own observations and interactions with the group.

This is not an exercise in idiot hunting; I did not search for people I could make look foolish, and I do not present any of them as official spokesmen. Everyone I talked to was friendly to me and eager to speak, even after I said what kind of blog I write. I enjoyed our conversations and I want to be as fair to them as I can.

Garrett was holding a sign listing specific financial legislation he'd like to see. "Restore Glass-Steagle, Replace the SEC, Regulate hedge funds, tax carried interest and protect our economy."

He's been following financial issues issues for five years and this was the first time he's protested since Richard Nixon's second inauguration in 1973. His plan was to display his sign for a few hours and he was there with Max, his gentle goldendoodle dog.

Garrett is very specific about what changes he wants to see for the country, as listed on his sign, and he expressed mild frustration that the Occupy Boston isn't targeting Wall Street the way the New York protests are. Instead, he said, the focus is on inequality and freedom of speech

I spotted Kevin wearing a Ron Paul shirt. He said he did not support the anti-capitalism message that's so common at the protest and supports ending the Federal Reserve, which is a libertarian message that was extremely popular with everyone at the Boston protest.

The protesters were camped a few hundred feet from the Federal Reserve bank of Boston and I wandered through the tent city and found a young man and woman with a cardboard sign about legalizing medical marijuana in Maine. They said they'd rather I talk to Victor, a young, shirtless tough-looking guy who didn't want to appear on camera.

Scrawled on his left forearm in sloppy permanent marker was the phone number for the National Lawyers Guild in case he was arrested.

Victor said the people there feel like outcasts. He said the protest has a real "community vibe" and its not controlled by any outside political groups, including liberal ones. From my own observations, I saw zero no signs supporting Obama or the Democratic party while I was there, nor did I hear anyone say much about them.

George Orwell would have loved Victor's no-nonsense honesty when I asked him what solutions he supports. With no hesitation, he said he wants to support the middle class by depopulating the Earth. In his world, rich people would be allowed to exist unless they get lazy and do nothing productive. Victor said rich people who get lazy would be "murdered."

I appreciate Victor's boldness and inability to mask his views. I asked him if he's read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," as his clarity is exactly what Orwell endorsed, and he confessed he's not much of a reader. Despite the violence of his message, he was completely civil to me.

Mark had just arrived a few hours before as a "weekend warrior" who planned to protest until Monday's college classes. Safety-pinned to his sleeve was a red cross labeling him a protest "medic."

Mark's medical background is limited to lifeguard duty and he's there to clean pepper spray out of people's eye and help with any bumps and scrapes in case anyone tripped on the concrete.

"Capitalism is basically collapsing around us," Mark told me. The issues he cares about are the income gap and injustice. This was his first protest and he said everyone is there for scattered reasons, but the event feels like a big party.

"I think it's fair to say a lot of people here are pissed-off liberals," Mark said. He considers himself somewhat of an anarchist and wants to see the world organized with more local control. He'd rather decisions be made in the community, rather than at the state or federal level.

As I spoke with Mark, a protester named Justin came by and picked up some litter around us.

"I don't want this place to get shut down because there's trash everywhere," said Justin. He said the organizers asked for a few volunteers to help keep trash managed and he was eager to help.

At first glance Vlad seemed like a stereotypical surfer dude with a hippie drum, but his positions were nuanced and thoughtful. He's opposed to inequality between the rich and poor, greed and the way the banks are run.

However, after taking business classes he opposes the minimum wage because it will "drive jobs away." He said he was at the protest to help send a message that people are unsatisfied with the nation and the economy.

Vlad deserves a lot of credit for saying he doesn't have a firm opinion on the Federal Reserve because he doesn't know enough about the issue. It's somewhat rare to hear someone say "I don't know" or "I was wrong" in any political discussion, and I see them as a sign of thoughtful engagement, independent thinking and honesty.

Daniel had a table filled with socialist books and newspapers and he said while the movement has a lot of different viewpoints, the protest is socialist at its core. He said the reason the anti-FED view is so big is that the Federal Reserve is part of the corporate structure that controls the world.

I talked to him a bit longer than anyone else, and once again, everything was civil and courteous.

For econ nerds, when he tried repeating Marx's theory that firms with the lowest wages would be the most competitive, driving down wages, I cited Sean Masaki Flynn's book Economic for Dummies and the response that there is a finite supply of workers firms compete for by offering higher and higher compensation packages, and his only response was that there is an infinite supply of workers, which is silly.

As I was leaving, Daniel offered me a newspaper titled SocialistWorker.org from his stand. It turned out to be a Dutch treat, as after I picked it up he asked for a "suggested $1 donation." In the spirit of capitalism and free market loopholes, I paid him for his product.

This movement is like a horoscope where everyone reading it thinks it is tailored to their own experiences.

Occupy Wall Street started as routine anarchist/Marxist protest, and regular liberals have jumped on, so now the protest is a mix of anti-capitalists and Democrats. Each group thinks the movement is about their beliefs, not the others, and the Democrats get really upset when the movement is characterized as socialist.

It'd be really easy for me to take Victor and Daniel and say they are the core of this movement, but that would be dishonest. I saw a lot of average-looking young people mixed in as well, and a lot of moderate liberals support the movement from afar. However, the bomb-throwers can not be ignored

Anarchists protests do contain people who want to riot and assault police officers. They carry clubs disguised as flags and wear masks to cheat video evidence. This is not a news flash.

The National Lawyers Guild number Victor and Mark wore demonstrate organizers expected arrests, and a few days after I was there more than 100 protesters went out of their way to trespass and resist arrest. The left has this habit of trying to get arrested, then looking at the arrests as a noble sacrifice and proof that the police are thugs. That doesn't mean that police never brutalize protesters, of course, but the protesters aren't always the victims they claim to be.

If you've never heard "The people's Mic," than you have no idea how annoying it is. Try watching this Occupy Atlanta clip without skipping ahead. Speakers have to stop every few words to allow the audience to repeat them in a jumbled fashion. It's supposed to amplify the message, but it comes out like Apache Chief on an old radio. The sound rings of conformity, not solidarity.

All the classic criticisms of the Tea Party were there in Boston. It was mostly white people, there were poorly-written signs, plenty of people were angry, some protesters didn't know what they were talking about, established political activists are pushing it along and protesters started with an unfocused goal. Because there is no central leadership, anyone can idiot hunt and drag up something stupid a protester said. Critics will say that person is a typical member of the group, and supporters will say they're not.

I'm glad I went, as I feel I have a firmer grasp of why people feel so energized by this movement. I support few of the causes they care about, and even less of the solutions they support.

We really do have problems with a lack of jobs, an expensive arms race for college education, an out-of-control Federal Reserve, corporate bailouts and high health care costs. Those problems need to be addressed, but I see hands-off government policy as the solution, not expansion of Washington I heard on the streets of Boston.

Steve Jobs wasn't in the 99%

2011-10-10T22:39:00.004-04:00

I became aware of a strange contradiction this past week while my Facebook news feed blew up with my 20-something friends posting about the recent death of Steve Jobs and their support of Occupy Wall Street, which I've already written about more times than I expected to.

The same people that saw their lives enriched by Steve Jobs and Apple computer products are claiming that the richest 1 percent of Americans got that way by taking things away from other people. This is the mistake of assuming that acquiring wealth is a zero-sum game.

Steve Jobs got rich by helping create wealth. He made others better off by helping focus a lot of ideas from other people into useful applications. His gains carried with them gains to other people by putting iPhones and MP3 players into their hands. Why isn't he being demonized at these protests?

I don't like when someone claims to speak for me, such as these protesters declaring they represent the bottom 99 percent of Americans. I've been poor the last three years, although I made a great comeback this spring, and I still share few of the values these groups express.

In addition, by claiming they speak for nearly everyone, they're lumping in a lot of rich people. As Ezra Klein put it in an otherwise sympathetic post:

Let’s be clear. This isn’t really the 99 percent. If you’re in the 85th percentile, for instance, your household is making more than $100,000, and you’re probably doing okay. If you’re in the 95th percentile, your household is making more than $150,000.

You can't claim the richest Americans got that way only by harming people, and then turn around and praise a members of that group for enriching your life. I'm willing to grant these protesters that there are some bad things coming out of Washington, like bailouts, agricultural subsidies and the war on drugs, but that doesn't mean the wealthy are refugees from a Thomas Nash cartoon.

Goodbye, Steve

2011-10-05T23:25:00.005-04:00

Today the world lost innovate and entrepreneur Steve Jobs to cancer. If this wasn't enough of a tragedy already, Brian Dunning reports that the odds are Jobs would still be alive if he had gone to a hospital instead of a witch doctor when he was found out he had pancreatic cancer.

Dunning writes:

Most pancreatic cancers are aggressive and always terminal, but Steve was lucky (if you can call it that) and had a rare form called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor, which is actually quite treatable with excellent survival rates — if caught soon enough. The median survival is about a decade, but it depends on how soon it’s removed surgically. Steve caught his very early, and should have expected to survive much longer than a decade. Unfortunately Steve relied on a naturopathic diet instead of early surgery. There is no evidence that diet has any effect on islet cell carcinoma. As he dieted for nine months, the tumor progressed, and took him from the high end to the low end of the survival rate.

Eventually it became clear to all involved that his alternative therapy wasn’t working, and from then on, by all accounts, Steve aggressively threw money at the best that medical science could offer. But it was too late. He had a Whipple procedure. He had a liver transplant. And then he died, all too young.

When something terrible happens, people like to blame the things they already dislike. I am no exception, but in this case I just happen to be right.

Edit: Dunning has since edited the post I drew the quote from to say Jobs adopted a magic diet from Dr. Dean Ornish, not a naturopath. This does not change my overall point, but does shift it from one form of alternative medicine to another.

Occupy Wall Street is like social media

2011-10-04T00:28:00.008-04:00

Judging by what I'm observing on Facebook, the Occupy Wall Street movement has gained a lot of popularity with starry eyed 20-something liberals and bitter old progressives. I am now of the opinion this isn't going to just die down like the left's last attempt to replicate the Tea Party with the recent pro-union protests.

But that doesn't mean the protests will actually accomplish anything. Since they made the critical error of having no actual goals, they may be end up wasting their momentum by trying to adopt every vaguely left-wing position and spreading themselves too thin.

All that angry shouting may make the protesters feel energized, but if its not focused it won't actually accomplish anything.

As science-based marketing champion Steve Cuno has said, "Never mistake marketing-related activity for actual marketing." What we have here is social media popularity, where a lot of people may click "like" on a picture of the item your selling, but never actually buy one.
There have been a few sprawling lists of demands from the protest organizers, or people claiming to be in charge. I think the response was so much bigger than anticipated that the anti-capitalists who helped start the protests quickly lost control. Movements like the Tea Party and Earth First! function without central leadership, which makes it difficult to hash out cohesive doctrines.

The demands I have seen emerge are all over the place. There are some I agree with, like ending the war on drugs and Patriot Act, but others are so ignorant I had to check to make sure they weren't a parody. For example:

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

Good grief. With so many unattainable, awful demands like this one, any movement that tries to establish them is doomed to failure. This is a complete divorce from economic reality. The ignorant protectionism is then curiously followed with a demand for free and open borders. This is strange, as open borders are essentially free trade for labor.

Along with other demands, the little darlings put a bow on top with the line: "These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy."

This is a recipe for unemployment and high prices, not prosperity.

The stupidity of these demands suggests that police have indeed been hitting the protesters in the head with billy clubs. I think if the smart liberals who are jumping on board see some of these ideas like a $20 minimum wage become central to the movement, they will either try to change them or abandon ship.

This movement can only be popular as long as it doesn't try to accomplish anything. If it never narrows down its demands, it will never accomplish anything. If it chooses moderate liberal positions, it will just be swallowed up by the Democratic party. If it chooses the radical demands being floated at this point, membership will drop and the movement will be marginalized.

Pretty pretend guns are not a right

2011-10-01T23:43:00.002-04:00

Lately my fellow bloggers have been writing about the importance of rights, like the right to a trial in relation to the safety of the public over at Congress Shall Make No Law, and fictional rights that fools cherish, such as the right not to be offended as Popehat and For The Sake of Science both did a great job of hammering out.

So with that in mind, I'm going to tackle the issue that really matters to me - the false claim that Gears of War 3 players have a natural right to pretty guns.

Gears of War 3 is an Xbox game that retails for $60. In some online multiplayer modes, there are some purely aesthetic customizations one can make to their character, the relevant one here being "weapon skins," where the guns players uses can have different paint jobs or animated graphics to make their pretend guns dazzle. Some of these weapon skins are unlocked by completing specific tasks in the game, but a set of 22 was made that players have to pay real money to use.

For $3, you can unlock a static paint scheme like tiger stripes or a flower pattern for all five starting weapons. For $4, you get an animated graphic, like an ocean ripple, for all five. For $15, you can unlock all 22 skins for one of the five weapons, and for a poorly-spent $45 you can unlock each and every one of them.

Predictably, there has been a lot of complaints on the Internet, most of it whiny. The best articulated criticism I have seen is from a level-headed competitive player named K.L. who made a very reasonable video saying this isn't the end of the world, but he doesn't like the policy of incorporating money-making tactics normally reserved for freemium games into a retail game. He hit all the normal points, such as making people pay to use content on the disc, something I don't have a problem with.

Let me start by saying K.L., or "arCtyC" as he likes to be called, has hit upon a gut feeling I share. There is something disappointing about having to pay to use these fun weapon skins. He also does a good job of stressing that this is an entirely voluntary transaction.

Paying to make your pretend guns prettier goes beyond voluntary and satisfies all of the criteria of Michael Munger's "euvoluntary" or "truly voluntary" criteria. Epic Games created the skins, has the legal right to sell them and customers know what they're getting. The weapons skins have no impact on weapon performance, and there are still zero-dollar unlockable weapon skins, so players are not punished for failing to buy them. There is no coercion vaguely associated with this transaction.

So that leaves one criteria to be considered euvolunary. How terrible is the Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement, or BATNA? If not buying a product will result in the death of a consumer, the BATNA differential is said to be very large.

I have trouble imaging a smaller BATNA than not being able to use a pretty pretend gun without paying $3. Sure, it's foolish for most people to pay $45, and I imagine most people chose not to, but a lot of people paid an extra $90 to have their copy of the game bundled with a cheap desk statue, a few trinkets, fake documents and a few different weapon skins and aesthetic downloads. For some reason, offering special editions of games and movies to consumers doesn't draw the same complaints, but the same elements are all there.

I gave it some thought and paid $3 to have the pretty flower imagine at the start of this post put on some of my pretend guns. This small price acts as a barrier, preventing every other player from having an obnoxious arsenal, and as a result I haven't run into anyone else with the same pretty guns.

There is no way to know if Epic Games planned to include the weapon skins, and later decided to charge for them, or were simply looking for another source of revenue and put a little bit of work into creating these for-pay paint jobs. The intent is irrelevant. The weapon skins are a fun addition to the game that I was happy to pay a small amount of money for, and in result, I received exactly what I wanted.

Occupy Wall Street is aimless nonsense

2011-09-28T22:20:00.008-04:00

I don't like public protests.

It doesn't matter what the cause is, from calls for violent Marxist revolutions to the small government Tea Party rallies, there is something about public demonstrations that just turn me off.

They're loud, clumsy and mindless and they praise crude signs and annoying chants. Instead of the marketplace of ideas, protests are a monopoly of conformity. As Jean-Francois Revel said:

A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence.

Enter Occupy Wall Street, a completely generic protest that has no real goals and is now trying to shoehorn every broad liberal talking point under a common banner. The idea of deciding what a protest is about after it's started isn't revolutionary, it's moronic.

This is the perfect example of the sad state of modern protests - self-righteous feel-good antics that have little chance of accomplishment.

If the goal is to change the world in a targeted way, than public protests are a poor investment of time and money. If instead the goal is to develop an undeserved sense of accomplishment, then by all means, paint those brown cardboard signs and repeat those slogans.

What is Elizabeth Warren's point?

2011-09-25T09:43:00.008-04:00

The lefties on my radar were enthusiastic this past week about a stump speech on taxes from "consumer advocate" and 2012 senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren.

Warren's statement, which can be read by clicking the image at the beginning of this post or heard in the video at the end, does a great job of dismantling an argument that no one is actually making.

If I find someone arguing that rich people shouldn't have to pay any taxes, I'll be sure to send them to Warren's Den of Intellectual Dishonesty. But as it stands, she is getting a lot of mileage with empty rhetoric.

From The Economist:

Of course, not unlike a tea-party Republican making the case for small government, Ms Warren paints in over-broad, simplifying strokes. It is not actually true that "the rest of us" paid for the roads, the education of workers, or police and fire protection. Some of us paid for them, and some of us paid a lot more than others. Rich people, for example, have paid and continue to pay more than the rest of us.

I hear on NPR almost every morning the debate phrased as "should the rich have to pay a little more." Did I just wake up Estonia? We already have a progressive tax structure, where the rich pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes, but the left seems to forget that detail and acts as if taxes are flat.

I understand and respect the progressive tax viewpoint. Wealth brings diminishing returns to someone's quality of life. In effect, the rich can afford to lose a bigger percentage of their money. That's a reasonable position.

But just how unbalanced are they willing to make the tax structure? Is there a point where they will be satisfied the rich has paid enough? We want details, not vague hand waving. I understand there are many other types of federal taxes than income tax, but the rich are already paying more of the taxes than anyone else, and here's Elizabeth Warren acting like they don't pay any.

Warren's rhetoric is a cover to justify arguments that unchecked amounts of wealth belong to the government because the government made a limited contribution to its creation.

So not only did the rich help pay for it, they paid for more of it than anyone else.

Keep a big hunk of it? Just how much are we talking about? This is drivel, and I have no idea what she means by "pay forward for the next kid that comes along" either.

Everyone should pay taxes Liz, not just the rich, and for all the reasons you mentioned.

Protectionism served sunny side up

2011-09-22T13:52:00.009-04:00

Following the Solyndra scandal, where President Obama championed a sweetheart $535 million loan to a California solar panel company that spent it frivolously then went bankrupt, alternative energy subsidies are getting more of the scrutiny they deserve.

But to me, the issue highlights the protectionist hypocrisy surrounding our trade relations with China. A recent statement from U.S. Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) demonstrates this inconsistency:

Chinese producers often receive large subsidies from their government and price their goods at levels that do not reflect the reality of the marketplace thus putting U.S. industries at a distinct disadvantage unless remedies are used to level the playing field.

Wyden identified the Department of Commerce’s authority to self-initiate an investigation into the application of anti-dumping and countervailing duties as one remedy as well as conditions place on China’s entry to the World Trade Organization that give the president the authority to impose tariff safeguards on surging Chinese imports that disrupt U.S. industry.

Reality of the marketplace? Did an unsold Solyndra solar panel fall and bonk Wydon on the head?

American solar panels do not reflect the "reality of the marketplace" because they receive subsidies as well, as well as tax breaks for people who use them. These unrealistic, artificially low prices happen because America does exactly what he's accusing China of doing.

Perhaps Wyden is unaware of the "green jobs" kick that's going on in Washington?

Nope, he's bringing home green eggs and pork for his constituents.

This is the kind of garbage you get when you put economic illiterates in positions of power. Wyden is just the latest in a long line of fools who say they want Americans to use environmentally-friendly energy sources, but when Chinese tax payers offer to pay part of the bill, these so-called environmentalists spaz out and threaten to place higher taxes on American consumers.

Don't take investment advice from lottery winners

2011-09-19T23:28:00.008-04:00

I was listening to an NPR interview this morning with actor Aaron Paul of the show Breaking Bad, and he told host Terry Gross that he had the blessing of his family and teachers when he moved to Los Angeles immediately after graduating early from high school to pursue an acting career.

Paul said when he was getting ready to leave, one of his teachers pulled him aside out of concern and asked if he had a Plan B in case he can't make it as an actor. He did not, and his mother was so angered that she went to the school and yelled if the teacher had a Plan B in case the education field doesn't work out.

This drivel annoys me, that people should follow their dreams no matter what and ignore the naysayers. Gross really did her audience a disservice by not challenging Paul's arrogance. The reason is something I call the VH1 Behind the Music effect.

I'm open to a punchier title if anyone has one.

The idea is similar to the Anthropic principle in physics, where we only observe a universe that appears designed for life because we won the cosmic lottery and are alive to observe. VH1 interviews musicians who say they were told they'd never make it in the cutthroat entertainment business, and every one of them turned out a success.

But VH1 only interviews successful musician, they don't talk to the miserable record store clerk who never wrote a hit song. There is a survivorship bias at play, where the successful musicians give advice and the failures don't share their experience.

My generation has been fed this awful "follow your dreams" advice that has lead a lot of them into pursuing useless college degrees for fields where they can't make money. The problem is, everyone wants to do these fun jobs so there's a lot more applicants than positions. Instead of having a rewarding job that never feels like work, most of them have to settle for a different job that pays poorly, or rack up more debt and go back for a degree in something practical.

Kids don't benefit from bogus feel-good advice. Paul's teacher was right to be concerned with his future because he was using a risky strategy. It doesn't matter that it turned out reasonably well for him, it was still a bad move to make without a back-up plan. As Greg Mankiw said, it's better to judge on the logic of ones decisions than their results.

Darwin the economist

2011-09-17T22:02:00.003-04:00

The newest episode of EconTalk should not be missed. Guest Robert Frank served as a great balance to Russ Roberts, so listeners got a good mix of "left" economics and "right" economics.

Frank scored so major honesty points when he said that before the government intervenes in the economy, it should make sure its plan won't make things worse. Yes, sometimes the market returns results that are not socially optimal, but there's no point in applying government pressure if you have no reason to believe the results will be better.

He also made a tremendously concise comparison of the wastefulness of both evolution and free markets. For example, male elephant seals fight each other for harems of females, so genes that make them better combatants get passed on. As a result, a male elephant seal weighs about 6,000 pounds. That's wasteful. They'd all be better off if they all fell a third in size.

Compare that to hockey players, who can see more without a helmet. If given a choice, most players will opt not to wear one. That means no one gets an advantage, and everyone is at risk of an injury. Because of this, players will vote to enforce helmet rules on everyone.

Message to Michael Hawkins: this one is perfect for you.

Also, in the final minutes, Frank went into the advantages of replacing the income tax with a consumption tax, and I was impressed at how simple the mechanism is. I know Dan over at Crumb City is a fan of this policy, even if most of his work is about slaying trolls and stealing tomes.

Can we take back the word "attack"

2011-09-14T10:03:00.009-04:00

I despise exaggerated language.

Case in point: President Obama's re-election campaign has started AttackWatch.com, a website to collect and respond to criticism of the president. The campaign also encouraged Twitter users to include #AttackWatch in their messages to help them collect information, but that strategy has humoursly backfired as only Obama critics are using the hashtag and as I write this are flooding Twitter with comments like "I'd like to report a crime. All of the Obama stickers on cars are disappearing" and "I think my friend's a Tea Party Terrorist; keeps talking about paying down debt & personal responsibility."

My issue isn't the strained Orwellian comparison to reporting on your neighbors that some people are making, it's this trend of using the word "attack" when talking about criticism.

Attack is a word associated with violence and malice. It drips with negativity and contempt. Criticism, however, is a necessarily part of free speech. When you see something you disagree with, you should be able to respond to it. That's a hallmark of scientific skepticism. As Ken at Popehat.com likes to say, speech is not tyranny.

When Naomi Klein wrote "The Shock Doctrine," her manipulation of statistics to prove that liberalization of economies harms poor people was like building a pirate ship from a Lego blocks packaged in a fairy princess castle set - it required a lot of creativity and a willingness to place things incorrectly. Economist Jonah Norberg responded to her claims, and she wrote back with an essay titled "One Year After the Publication of The Shock Doctrine, A Response to the Attacks"

Emphasis added. To his credit, Norberg sarcastically called his slam-dunk reply "Three Days After Klein's Response, Another Attack" and in the subtitle stated "In Klein's world, criticism is an attack, unless she does the attacking." He then proceeded to give the greatest political, scientific and statistical uppercut of the decade on Klein's thesis.

Saying you were "attacked" when someone criticizes you is thin-skinned and cowardly, and it's not just liberals who are throwing the word around. If you aren't emotionally stable enough to be criticized, then you have no business speaking up in the first place.

Yes, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme...

2011-09-11T15:30:00.007-04:00

...and if you don't agree, then you don't know how Social Security works.

The other day I sat in my parked car several minutes after I arrived just to hear NPR's promised response to candidate Rick Perry's criticism that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

Unfortunately, all the reporter said was that it wasn't. She did not go into details.

A Ponzi scheme masquerades as an investment plan, but instead of generating more money and paying investors, money from new "investors" is simply given to established "investors." There is no actual investment taking place, money is simply shuffled around. A Ponzi scheme works as long as more and more people come in - but it's a vicious circle, because they will have to be paid with money taken from more people. Eventually, the numbers get too big and it goes broke.

Social Security works the same way, it's just a much slower system. It simply takes money from working people and hands it over to the retired, and it depends on having new blood at all time. The ratio of contributors to collectors has been dropping for decades, and since the world population is expected to level off in 40 years, it's going to crash,

Social Security was sold to the public, dishonestly, as an investment plan. But to defend the program before the Supreme Court in 1937, supporters said it was a welfare scheme. In practice it is a welfare program for the rich that is paid for with a regressive tax.

There is no room for debate. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. It was doomed to fail from the start. The mechanism is the same, Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme.

A foolish act to follow

2011-09-08T21:59:00.006-04:00

You know, President Obama, maybe it's not a good idea to speak at a rally where the opening act is Jimmy Hoffa Jr.

The monopolistic power unions wield has always been a big temptation for organized crime, but modern union supporters try to gloss over big labors entwined history with the mob. In 2009 I attended a small gathering of lefties campaigning for pro-union legislation and they laughed about a rival ad that played up mafia connections with unions as if it were a far-fetched joke.

So why in the name of Anthony Provenzano would the Teamers let themselves get within Tommy gun distance of Hoffa 2.0? And worse, why on Earth would Obama endorse him?

Evolution is being used for a cheap political stunt

2011-09-05T12:08:00.007-04:00

Imagine this:

You're a political activist. Your side is in trouble; the sitting president you want to see re-elected failed to keep most of his campaign promises. He doesn't have any major successes to run on. The economy is still given up and at best they are too apathetic to vote.

What do you do?

In 2011, the answer from the left is to stir up as much reckless fear that any potential challengers from the GOP will turn the nation into a Christian theocracy. After all, these candidates have some associations to strange branches of Christianity and some of them support teaching Intelligent Design along with evolution.

Byron York nailed it when he said this is what running on fear looks like.

What's worse here is that my lefty friends in skeptical, secular and biological science communities are allowing themselves to be used in this political game and fearmongering.

Secular writers who already write about problems they see with mainstream Christianity are all too eager to echo these trumped-up "Dominionism" cries, possibly because of confirmation bias. Biologists like Richard Dawkins, who do a great job of defending evolution, are quick to jump to the unsupported conclusion that being wrong about evolution correlates with being wrong about other things.

Now when a Republican politician talks about science, I listen with the same anticipation of ignorance as when an older person talks about the Internet. Those talks are always a countdown to ignorance.

But compared to what? Since when has the left dedicated itself to defending evolution? It's awful that 60 percent of Republicans believe in creationism, but 38 percent of Democrats believe in it too. President Obama's pledge to "restore science to its rightful place in society" was just another empty campaign promise. As Ken from Popehat wrote on a similar incident;

You won’t find much creationism or global warming denying at the Huffington Post, but you will find it to be a cesspool of junk science and assorted twittery.

There are some major problems with the assumption that being dead-wrong about evolution disqualifies someone from holding office. Smart people can be very wrong about subjects outside of their area of expertise, and still right on the money in other cases. I don't know of any politician I've voted for that I didn't think was dead wrong on a few issues, and I doubt one will ever rise to power that I completely agree. Personally, I choose to vote for politicians who are wrong about things unrelated to the office they are running for. As David Harsanyi said in one of my favorite columns of 2010:

After all, what's more consequential than a faux pas about nature and/or nurture? Who cares that Democrat Michael Bennet was busy moralizing about the cosmic benefits of dubious economic theory and science fiction environmentalism — ideas that have already cost us trillions with nothing to show for it?

But there's one nagging question remaining. How did evolution end up on the table in the first place?

From the same Byron York piece I linked earlier:

Out on the campaign trail, Democratic activists are trying to maneuver the candidates into statements to feed the Republicans-are-religious-nuts narrative. For example, in New Hampshire a few weeks ago, a young boy approached Perry with a series of questions about science. How old is the Earth? the boy asked. As Perry answered (he said he didn't know), the boy's mother pushed her son to confront the governor. "Ask him about evolution," she ordered the boy. "Ask him why he doesn't believe in science." Perry's answer -- that evolution is a theory that has "some gaps" -- provided more material for [New York Times Executive Editor] Keller and the subject-changers.

Elsewhere on the trail, so-called "trackers" from the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, David Brock's American Bridge, and other organizations follow Republicans around, sometimes posing out-of-the-blue questions in hopes of throwing a candidate off message. "It's all about homosexuality, Islam, anything that is remotely sensitive socially," says Ellen Carmichael, spokeswoman for frequent target Herman Cain. "That's what they usually ask about."

Its clear what's going on here. The left wants to move the fight to a scientific issue the GOP will stumble on, so they are using children as puppets to throw anything they think will stick. Evolution was not selected because they think its an important subject; they just wanted a battle they know they can win.

It's telling that questions about the disproven link between vaccines and autism are not being lobbed at the Republicans. The anti-vacc movement is popular on the extreme left and extreme right, and my Google searches to find vaccine dirt on GOP contenders Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann did not return any, although I did find Perry being criticized by right wingers for supporting a mandatory HPV vaccine - a view supported by the left and medical science.

Keep in mind that Candidate Obama screwed up the vaccine issue, endorsing a pseudoscience belief of a vaccine-autism link, despite having the opposite stated on his campaign website.

I am not defending Republican ignorance of science. Despite these trolling questions being a hunt to produce gaffs, candidates like Perry willingly endorsed teaching intelligent design along with evolution. They set a trap and he was foolish enough to fall for it.

But don't pretend this was the result of the left displaying a Sagan-like love for science. This would be about Star Trek if the number polled that way. Evolution supporters are being used, plain and simple, and they will be unceremoniously dumped when the issue is over.

This isn't satire

2011-09-03T01:05:00.003-04:00

I was browsing a paper on using film clips to teach economics when I saw several references to a movie from 1998 I had never heard of called "Pentagon Wars."

Here's a clip:

Imagine my horror to discover that this is a fair assessment of what really happened with the evolution of the "Bradley Fighting Vehicle" from a troop transport into a tank.

Good grief.

A different take on Adam Smith

2011-08-30T20:00:00.000-04:00

This morning I was rewatching a Milton Friedman clip from one of his appearances on Phil Donahue's show when I realized I had been interpreting a famous Adam Smith quote incorrectly - or at least differently from Friedman's interpretation.

Smith said in Book IV, Chapter 2 of The Wealth of Nations:

By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.
Book IV

I added my own emphasis to the key word.

I have always taken this as Smith saying that he's never seen much good happen as a result of people who made their personal business and consumer decisions with the intention of helping overall society instead of themselves.

Examples include the well-intentioned "Buy Local" movement, fair trade companies and the buy black campaign. In all these cases, noble consumers make personal sacrifices in hopes of making the world a better place, but these schemes fail to return any positive results.

I have one caveat - if I believed there was a large problem with inhumane working conditions that could be solved by boycotting those companies, such as actual slave labor, than I would support such a boycott. As it stands, I don't. However, that is a little different in avoiding contributing to harm instead of promoting good. It's subtle, but it's there.

But what Friedman said Smith meant was something different - when merchants claim they are doing something for the good of the public at large, they are really bootleggers hiding behind Baptists.

Merchants aren't above making claims that shopping at their store will benefit other people when their real goal is to increase their own profits. Friedman is saying that not much good is done when people claim they are acting in the public interest. The "Buy Local" movement is actually a great advertising scheme for merchants, as they can still attract customers with higher prices or smaller selections. I completely understand why they'd jump on this bandwagon.

But as Friedman would say, the rest of us our fools to take their word for it.

Whatever Smith meant, both interpretations hold a lot of truth.

Standard of living and video games

2011-08-26T19:02:00.004-04:00

I had been planning on writing a piece to prove how cheap video games have gotten over the years by factoring in inflation, but it turned out a number of other people have already done that, some with pretty graphs and video segments.

So I'm going to dig a little deeper to show that the inflation comparison only scratches the surface.

Both the consoles and the games themselves have fallen in price. The two Nintendo titles from 1989 went for $95.44 and $121.46 each in 2010 dollars, although those catalog prices were a little above average at the time. It's true, video games have never been cheaper.

It's also important to remember that the $50 to $60 modern Xbox games are much more advanced that the Nintendo games I grew up with. Russ Roberts has gone into more detail with his comparison of expanding iPod features and memory coupled with falling prices. The lesson is the same: repetitive levels, 8-bit graphics and sound effects have been replaced with rich environments, HD graphics and voice actors.

Compare the basic left-right-forward-back movements of Doom from 1993 with the 3-D environments and cover to dive behind in Gears of War from 2006. The original Legend of Zelda manual had drawings to let the player know what the items and monsters in the game were supposed to look like. Some old-school RPGs had a few choices for the player to make, but they doesn't come close to the complicated plots and moral dilemas in games like Mass Effect and Fallout 3.

And even with those price drops and quality increases, there are now substitute goods to console traditional games that give consumers even cheaper alternatives, like downloadable titles, which fall in the $5 to $20 range, and now mobile games on smart phones, which fall in the $1 to $5 range. These alternatives tend to be shorter than the console games, but some like Section 8: Prejudice or Angry Birds are known for their replay value coupled with a low price.

In fact, mobile games have been so popular as a cheap alternative that the new portable Nintendo 3DS system flopped on release this year, its $40 price for new games couldn't compete with phone games cheaper than a sandwich.

If Brad Delong ever writes an updated version of his brilliant Cornucopia: Increasing Wealth in the Twentieth Century paper showing the complications in standard of living comparisons, than he'll have need find no better example than Pac-Man versus Castle Crashers.

Edit: I have more to say on this matter.

Don't say you weren't warned

2011-08-23T22:10:00.004-04:00

Everyone talks about bubbles as if they are undetectable until they burst. From the recent housing and Internet bubbles back to the (silly) Dutch tulip bubble of 1637, seemingly rational people get swept up in these financial fads, then get seriously hurt when they collapse.

But just because we're coming out of a recession doesn't mean we're not in a bubble - or bubbles - now. The price of gold has gone up once again - and any investor worth his salt knows previous metals are volatile and unpredictable. Taking into account long-term performance, gold has not been a good investment choice historically. Yet, you can still profit off an irrational investment during a craze by adapting to the situation, just as long as you're lucky enough to cash out before the crash.

So with the combination of popular risky adaptive strategies that make money, how can anyone argue that gold is not a bubble?

But that's not the only one, and unfortunately, while the gold bubble is only being pushed by Glenn Beck, the higher education bubble is being pushed by everyone - the public school system, student grants, employers and parents.

College tuition has been steadily rising for decades beyond the rate of inflation. Students are told if they make this inflated purchase, they will be able to collect higher paychecks for the rest of their lives - a promise that is routinely being broken. It's a bubble alright.

Or as Sarah Lacy put it in a summary quote I stole from The Economist:

Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe. The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.

These inflated tuition - which I believe are caused by the abundance of money supplied by loans and grants - are being squandered frivolously by schools. Maybe higher education needs its own Moneyball-style visionary to come in and teach students out of decade-old math, Latin and classic literature textbooks, hire competent instructors who don't work on research projects and skip the marble stairwells and organic cafeteria food.

The collapse of the higher education bubble will happen - and it may be coming a lot sooner than anyone expects.

Owned & operated by a Juggalo

2011-08-20T01:13:00.005-04:00

This gem is from BuzzFeed's coverage of the Gathering of the Juggalos:

Can a "Buy Juggalo" campaign be far behind?

Economists as political villians

2011-08-18T23:20:00.012-04:00

I've never gotten over how large a role economics plays in politics, and by that I mean, how large a role Do-It-Yourself Economics plays. Essentially, outsiders think they can guess their way to mastery of this strange and counter-intuitive body of knowledge. That explains why there's still a debate on things like free trade, despite the issue being as firmly entrenched among experts as Darwinian evolution.

What really makes my blood boil is when I see these guess-based economists dismissing important economic scientists for political reasons. I see some of my fellow right-wingers talk about John Maynard Keynes as if he was a bumbling fool, and denounce his General Theory. In reality, Keynes was an absolute genius who cast a shadow on the intellect of thinkers as brilliant as Bertrand Russell.

Some lefties have done the same thing with my hero, Milton Friedman. From disrupting his Nobel Prize ceremony to casting him as the villain in political books, lefty hacks have never understood the moral, gentle-natured man Friedman was, or how much good he's done for the world as an intellectual.

It's no secret that I reject Keynesian policies, but that's not the same as rejecting the entirety of Keynesian economics. There are actually two Keynes, as well as two Friedmans: They each had a scientific and political side, and they each made undeniable advances to economic science.

Political commentators may think of Keynesians and Friedmanites as warring parties, but actual economists like Greg Mankiw and Brad Delong are quick to cite both as major influences. Friedman himself spoke highly of Keynes and had no qualms about borrowing ideas from him.

I do want to caution that I do not extend the same courtesy to Karl Marx, who I insist was the Trofim Lysenko of economics. He did not contribute anything meaningful to economics and his influence has lead to inexcusable calamity. He made direct calls for violence and there's a reason his modern followers are on the fringe.

Economists are scientists, looking to learn more about the clockwork of our beautiful world. Sometimes their scientific conclusions lead them to support or oppose specific policies, and it's troubling to hear people claim that is a recipe for villainy. I do not accept all of Keynes's conclusions, but I would never go so far as to lump him in with the likes of Darth Vader, Adolf Hitler or Karl Marx.

Blocked by coordination concerns

2011-08-15T23:25:00.009-04:00

I fully intended to take advantage of the lift on the state sales tax over the weekend, but I had the unfamiliar problem of not being able to think of any items I wanted to buy.

Sunday afternoon I found myself in the toy section at Target, trying to find a gift for a friend's one-year-old daughter that I would expect her to enjoy, and wouldn't mind being associated with by the other adults.

A further restriction is the child's mother cares a lot about what materials the toys are made of, so most stuffed animals were out. While I do not share this view, a gift to a young child is really a gift to the parents, money being fungible and all, and I believe when you try to help someone, you should do so on their terms.

I ended up putting the purchase on hold because I could not decide between several Lego-style knockoff plastic blocks. The actual Lego Duplo blocks are labeled for 18 months and up, and her first birthday isn't for a month, so that's no good. On the same shelf for 12 months and up were Fisher-Price Trio Junior blocks and Mega Bloks, and I didn't see any obvious difference in quality or price.

My concern was that someone else may give her a different brand of blocks, such as the three above or a dark horse candidate like Best-Lock blocks. It would be rather inconvenient for the birthday girl to have two incompatible block "scales" in her playpen, and the two would be mixed together and cause a real headache. I needed plastic block coordination before I felt comfortable making a purchase.

What's more, with the irrational power of sunk costs, that mere $20 purchase could inspire her parents to buy more blocks of the same brand and build up a single-brand block collection. However, none of those blocks looked as sturdy and uniform as the Lego blocks I grew up with. I could be hamstringing this girl's chance for a real Lego childhood. Can that all be avoiding by waiting an extra six months to go with Lego Duplo? I'm not sure.

I thought about making the purchase anyway, but I decided to put it on hold until I could coordinate things with the parents. I had to remind myself that the gift doesn't have to be a surprise to them.

After this overly-introspective attempt buying a gift, I think I can finally relate to Dr. Manhattan. Knowing too much really can paralysis your ability to function socially.

Food police and technology standards

2011-08-12T23:11:00.006-04:00

William Duggan said that creativity is taking two ideas from different concepts and combining them, such as how Henry Ford's breakthrough moving assembly line was just the Chicago stockyard where meat was moved along rails combined with a stationary Oldsmobile 1901 assembly system.

Earlier this morning it hit me that two unrelated ideas on my radar belong together: Flawed food control policies where consumers are forbidden or restricted from from buying foods with certain non-toxic ingredients, such as bans on trans fats or soda in schools, is similar to a technology standards, where policies try to bring about certain outcomes by forcing firms to use specific techniques, such as requiring catalytic converters, instead of targeting the actual outcomes, such as emissions.

For a more detailed account of the problems with technology standards, see my post from last year.

Supporters of legislation that uses a flawed technology standard are prone to present the issue as a false dichotomy, such as saying if you want to do something about air pollution, you have to support their bill to force factories to use certain emission-reducing devices.

It's important to avoiding thinking in terms of passing a regulation to fight air pollution or doing nothing, but instead to ask what form should the regulation take. Is that specific approach the best we can do to reach our goal, or should we just enforce that the goal be met, and give people the freedom to meet it their own way?

Banning soda is not a goal unto itself. The real goal is to reduce obesity and improve health. It is, for all intents and purposes, a technology standard. While I see improving the health of the public as a noble goal, the tactics being employed to reach that goal are flawed, in addition to being immoral.

However, the version of a performance standard here would be to fine or punish people for being overweight or unhealthy - and the ethical problems with such a policy are obvious. It would be instantly recognized as a great intrusion on liberty and privacy to weigh people and cart them off to prison if they didn't meet a rigid standard.

Yet, I see the restriction on what foods they can purchase as no less a vile trespass.

What about tobacco restrictions? The biggest issue with smoking is lung cancer, and how would the public feel about fining people with lung cancer? It wouldn't go over well, not nearly as well as telling adults under what circumstances they are allowed to smoke.

If you want to fight obesity, your best bet is to fight obesity itself. This insistence on smacking popular targets like fast food or soda - and without providing firm evidence that it will achieve the goal - is just showboating. I have seen a lot of policies and programs with the intention of fighting obesity, and I have never seen the desired results play out. Is there a community with 1980s level of obesity out there that activists can point to as a success?

Forcing people to follow your system robs them of the chance to create a better system - be it for reducing air pollution or visual pollution at the beach. The problem for the well-intentioned interventionists is that the performance standard is so obviously fascistic in nature, so they will continue to push their intrusive, ineffective technology standards.

EDIT: Mark made some good points that I wasn't clear enough in my conclusion. I have reworded several key areas and tacked on another paragraph to hit my point home.

Harris vs. Hayek

2011-08-11T23:06:00.009-04:00

I'm used to seeing Friedrich Hayek as a foil to John Maynard Keynes these days, but after turning some thoughts in my head lately about science and value judgments, I think he belongs in the arena with Sam Harris.

I have heard Harris argue that science can help us choose what we ought to value, a position dangerously close to saying science can rank any and all values - and Steven Novella has recently stated that Harris indeed holds that view.

I've added emphasis to what Hayek wrote on page 99 of The Road to Serfdom on why specialist intellectuals are making a mistake when they support central planning:

In our predilections and interests we are all in some measure specialists. And we all think that our personal order of values is not merely personal but that in a free discussion among rational people we would convince the others that ours is the right one. The lover of the countryside who wants above all that its traditional appearance should be preserved and that the blots already made by industry on its fair face should be removed, no less than the health enthusiast who wants all the picturesque but unsanitary old cottages cleared away, or the motorist who wishes the country cut up by big motor roads, the efficiency fanatic who desires the maximum of specialization and mechanization no less than the idealist who for development of personality wants to preserve as many independent craftsmen as possible, all know that their aim can be fully achieved only by planning – and they all want planning for that reason. But, of course, the adoption of the social planning for which they clamor can only bring out the concealed conflict between their aims.

Hayek's case against the objective truth of values leads me to two conclusions:

First, assuming Novella's summary of Harris's perspective is accurate and he believes that science can determine what values are universally superior, than Harris is committing scientism - using the trappings of science to make claims which are not scientific in nature.

As Hayek said in The Pretense of Knowledge:

There is as much reason to be apprehensive about the long run dangers created in a much wider field by the uncritical acceptance of assertions which have the appearance of being scientific as there is with regard to the problems I have just discussed. What I mainly wanted to bring out by the topical illustration is that certainly in my field, but I believe also generally in the sciences of man, what looks superficially like the most scientific procedure is often the most unscientific, and, beyond this, that in these fields there are definite limits to what we can expect science to achieve. This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.

So not only is Harris wrong, but he is playing with fire.

Second, the illusion that values can be objectively quantified and ranked is mandatory for anyone who believes in central planning. An individual who wants to march under a red banner with modern day Marxists must take Harris's side in the issue, for how could a central planner decide which elements of society to prioritize without a concrete, indisputable list of values?

Oh yeah?!?

2011-08-08T22:41:00.012-04:00

Over at For The Sake of Science, my liberal sparring partner Michael Hawkins discovered a Cambridge editorial attempting to refute a piece on buy local economics I wrote earlier this year for his publication Without Apology that I also submitted to Indie Skeptics.

I've never heard of the Cambridge Day before, and while I usually get a laugh by demoting a self-described online newspaper by calling it a "blog," writer Marc Levy seems to produce enough news content for it to be somewhat legitimate.

The logic behind his editorial, however, doesn't hold up. Levy attempts to sidestep most of my scientific claims, based on more than 200 years of mainstream academic economic insight on international trade, by dismissing me for labeling myself a conservative. He goes so far as to erroneously paint Hawkins with the same brush - a sloppy mistake, and far from the last.

I'm not going to write a long breakdown of every error. For example, my "a skeptical blog" subtitle is in reference to the scientific skepticism movement, not a deflection of gullibility accusations. Now that was a small error on his part, but it's completely isolated from the main point, and his main point is that he isn't an economist, and doesn't trust it as a science.

He starts off with a pithy few quotes from people like Will Rogers to show economists are not respected as proper scientists. Strangely, he did not use the best one - that if you laid all the economists in the world end to end, they still wouldn't reach an agreement. I've heard that yarn, and it's simple to deflect.

Economists, like all scientists, disagree on some things. Social sciences often have big disagreements from the different schools of thoughts. Psychology is a perfect example.

But scientists also have the occasional consensus. You will not find an economist who supports rent control, for example. But for that very reason, economic scientists do not debate rent control because a consensus exists. This issue has been put to bed plenty of times before, so I will move on.

Levy goes on to try to poke holes in the different analogies I made by treating them as full-size replicas. I use stories to illustrate economic points because a general audience finds them easier to digest than math-heavy abstract concepts, but Levy show more interest in making comparisons than attempting to learn anything.

Imagine if I said I have a rare condition that makes me shed my skin once a year, like a snake. Levy could have used this comparison to understand how my skin peels off in one complete piece, but instead tried to find subtle differences between myself and a snake. Snakes rub their heads against sharp rocks to start the peel, but say I peel off my skin using my hands. Levy would jump on that in order to reject the entire comparison. This accomplishes absolutely nothing.

When a reader misunderstands something I write, I try to take responsibly for not making my message clear enough. But several times with Levy as the reader, I can't bring myself to do it. In response to Bastiat's broken window parable, he quotes me as as saying:

The community is now a little bit poorer as the baker has one less suit then he otherwise would have.

And then responds:

It is? How is the community poorer because the baker paid a glazier instead of the tailor, especially when both planned to spend money at the cobbler’s shop?

As I just said, the baker has one less suit. Did he miss that? In the alternative model, he had to repurchase a window. Having one less suit means you are now poorer by one suit. I've never had to explain that to someone before, and it seems like he isn't even trying.

Levy also blurs the line between "buy local" and the fetish for small businesses. He assumes I am saying the solution is to only buy from large businesses. I said no such thing. In fact, my advice in the past has been to buy the best deal, however the consumer chooses to define it.

Large corporations embrace local purchasing preference in their own area. I've yet to hear a Maine localist speak against the huge LL Bean corporation based in Freeport. All of their velocity of money arguments work just as well for large companies as well as small - that's why I tend to avoid spending time on that issue.

I do not make the argument that buying locally is a bad thing to do. I do not see it as a sin, but I don't see it as a virtue either. Borders are just imaginary lines, no more relevant to economics as the color of a wallet is to the value of the money inside it.

Levy did manage to reproduce some of my best points, but I wish his responses had been more articulate or meaningful. He never addressed my central claim that he and his ilk are shrugging off hundreds of years of research and replacing it with "common sense" solutions - a mistake known as DIY economics.

It's interesting that he skipped over my take-down of the activist studies localists trumpet. They are a major component of why I insist their movement isn't merely wrong, but actual pseudoscience. This isn't Keynes vs. Hayek, it's Galileo vs. the Catholic Church.

The most puzzling part remains Levy's opening line - that my essay is "making the rounds." It's ironic that I've been writing so much about this issue for the past two years online, and it's the one article I write for Hawkins publication that gets the Internet's attention. That is, assuming my article is being circulated. My Google searches have not turned up some big list of links or comments, and my readership hasn't spiked since TAM 9. I'm curious to how Levy found it, and if it is getting more popular, does that mean the Koch brothers will finally start paying me?

Diablo III to use U.S. dollars

2011-08-05T09:50:00.009-04:00

Everyone is talking about Blizzard's decision to use a dual-currency system in Diablo III. Players will be able to use the normal in-game gold coins in their adventures and an auction house for looted items, and also be able to sell items in a special second auction house for real U.S. dollars.

The normal reaction people have is that this will allow some rich players to "cheat" the system. Here's are the details of that view:

In the past, players entered the world of Sanctuary as true equals from the same starting point, and through skill, planning and long hours their characters grew more powerful. It's how capitalism is supposed to work.

But now with these legal tender auction houses, Brigham Thaddeus Blueblood IV can spare a few bills and instantly turn his character into a powerhouse. He doesn't have to play very often and his character will trump those of hard-working students. The class struggle has moved online.

So here's why I think that view is wrong.

World of Warcraft has already shown us that tons of players are already cheating the system by purchasing from illegal gold farmers using real money. That perfect, unspoiled online world free from real money is already dead, Blizzard just has the sense to be the one's profiting from it.

That's not to say that gold farmers are completely out of the picture. Blizzard is taking a cut of each auction item when it goes up for sale, when it's sold, and when people want to cash out their account. They've got players coming, going and going home. If these fees are too high, a secondary gold-for-cash industry may exist.

In this quest for fairness, people forget that these games with high level caps and tons of items have always allowed players to become very powerful through a Faustian bargain. Players that sacrificed their own humanity by staying inside, logged on to the game to slay the same demon hog over and over again became those mighty purple-clad level 100 warriors that could push everyone around. It just cost them five hours of each day of their lives.

This has been a battlefield where the working man couldn't compete... because he was too busy at work. It benefited people with either the privilege or curse of having lots of free time to click animated goblins to death.

Yes, you will see some rare items skip the gold-house and go straight to the cash-house. I wonder if Gresham's Law will play a role and cause players to horde their greenbacks and burn through their gold quickly. And no doubt, some cheesy rich kid will gank better, more skilled players and type a series of misspelled words into the chat window.

But it was always like this. The price items command has not yet been determined, but it's possible they will be low enough where it's rational for an average Joe to finish his Monkfish Scales and get the full set bonus for once.

This cash auction house may be a fun way for some players to make a small profit, although the margins will be so low they'd be better off keeping the per-hour rate a mystery. We have plenty of other games that use real money to compare to, and none of them drove out the regular players.

I predict this will be like a Facebook update where everyone gets really upset by the change, complains for a long time, then gets used to it and forgets it was ever any other way.

More mandated coverage for health insurance

2011-08-02T22:50:00.009-04:00

I like my headline better: "Obama administration raises health insurance costs."

This week the New York Times wrote about the president forcing all health insurance plans to provide contraceptive services in women. But that's not all.

In addition to contraceptive services for women, the government will require health plans to cover screening to detect domestic violence; screening for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS; and counseling and equipment to promote breast-feeding, including breast pumps.

Other preventive services that must be covered, without co-payments, include screening for gestational diabetes in pregnant women; DNA testing for the human papillomavirus as part of cervical cancer screening; and annual preventive-care visits.

The recommendations come from the National Academy of Sciences, which apparently does not include any experts in economic science:

The National Academy of Sciences said the Obama administration had told its experts not to consider “the cost-effectiveness of screenings or services” in deciding which ones to recommend. Insurers expressed concern that coverage for some of the newly required preventive services could be costly.

What an absolutely beastly thing to say.

How could the National Academy of Sciences agree to go along with such a perverse order? What they are focusing on is what actions will have any improvements on health. They are not considering what the costs of those actions will be, including any side effects.

When you make an insurance company pay for more things, they will always respond with raising rates. Those increases in rates will impoverish some people, and will push insurance just out of the price range of others. Those people will be harmed, but they will not know what drove the prices up. Those people are invisible.

But the people helped by the policy will be easy to spot. They will end up in campaign ads. They are visible, and the visible always have the upper hand in politics.

There are two results that will absolutely happen as a result of this increased coverage mandate:

1: Health insurance rates will increase.

2: Those increases will be blamed on the insurance companies who have no choice but to follow the law. The administration will not be blamed or accept any responsibility.

Newsroom ethics reveal our dedication

2011-08-01T23:55:00.007-04:00

Part of me wishes everyone could have witnessed the ethical discussions that took place in my newsroom tonight.

I've written before about the incorrect notion that all for-profit news teams sensationalize to draw a larger audience. There's a very popular knee-jerk reaction when people see a news story they don't like that it's a result of journalistic negligence; the news team is willing to compromise their integrity if it'll bring in my revenue.

I criticized this idea in my TAM 9 presentation, and I said it ignores the principal-agent problem: Reporters don't get paid more if a story is popular, so why would they be willing to make a series of sacrifices for free?

The facts from tonight perfectly reflect what I was talking about.

I'm not going to include a link to the story. I have no desire to give this family's personal tragedy any more publicity, so I will just reveal the important facts.

A man took his own life in a very public and dramatic fashion. His father managed to get close enough to the scene to see the aftermath up close, and his anguish was very visible and public. Our photographer captured the moment perfectly in one of his photos. It looks like an award-winning photo; it's both moving and tells the story.

The issue for the news team was if its right to print the photo. Everything we captured took place outside and in front of a crowd. It was a public event. But the photo also crosses into a family's very personal tragedy. No one in the story is what's called a public figure, so they deserve a higher amount of privacy than a famous person would.

I was the reporter on the story, but the decision to use the photo belonged to the editor. The photographer and I pushed for the photo to be used, but the editor decided against printing it. The discussion was on telling the story and capturing the moment versus respecting a very private tragedy in someones life. We did talk about the paper's reputation, but at no point did profits ever come up.

Now compare tonight's events to the sensationalism claim. Everyone talked about producing an important story for our readers. I do not believe the editor is compensated directly on each paper sold, but I imagine the company judges his performance on sales. Yet he wanted to play it safe. The photographer and I are not judged on sales, yet we were the ones pushing the higher-risk strategy that could be criticized as sensationalism.

Everyone involved wanted to do their job right. This was a tough story to cover for a variety of reasons, and I respect the calls that were made. It also showed how seriously our team took the ethical matters here. All of this was behind the scenes - the readers will never know how much passion was behind the different perspectives. This was professionalism at its highest, and I wish more people were able to see it unfold.

Is corn syrup actually bad for you?

2011-07-29T23:07:00.012-04:00

I've been hearing this line for a long time - high-fructose corn syrup supposedly causes a more damage to your body over other sweeteners, and the solution is to ban it or pay more for cane sugar-sweetened foods.

It's supposedly an ingredient in most foods because American corn subsidies makes the syrup cheap - that's why we don't see it in Canadian and Mexican versions of Pepsi, for example.

That ignores the longstanding impact of sugar quotas, which allows the American sugar oligarchy to charge high prices for cane sugar. Imported sugar comes with higher tariffs the more that's imported, a blatant form of protectionism. Canadian and Mexican soda makers don't have the quotas as well as the subsidies.

People are right to oppose corn subsidies, as well as the related ethanol subsidies that caused the 2008 global food crisis. Agricultural subsidies need to go away. But so do sugar quotas.

What I'm not sure about is the validity of the anti-corn syrup mob chants. For a long time I thought it was activists making a big deal about a minor difference. Perhaps high-fructose corn syrup was ever-so-slightly worse for you than sugar. Big deal, that problem can be tolerated if the price is low enough. Thanks to market forces, the food police have the option of buying sugar cane versions of products if they want to pay.

My position was challenged after reading this piece from the Center for Consumer Freedom about it being a myth pushed by the sugar oligarchy, as well as a few other pieces. I am not an expert in nutrition science, and a lot of the anti-corn people swallow the organic, locally-grown all-natural food worldview that I know has major flaws. So what is the best science, from a neutral perspective, on high-fructose corn syrup?

I did a search on ScienceBasedMedicine.com and found a piece that said the issue is nonsense. The fructose levels, the chemical the activists claim is so bad, is also found in equal amounts in the alternative sweetners, including all-natural honey.

So yes, high-fructose corn syrup is bad for you, as is cane sugar, honey and agave syrup.

As an aside, there are claims that cane sugar makes sodas taste better and more refreshing. I bought this argument for a while until I tried a few cane sugar root beers, and later held a blind taste test of regular Pepsi and Pepsi Throwback. I didn't notice any difference, and the fifteenish people in my experiment couldn't tell which was which.

Voter ID doesn't matter.

2011-07-26T21:31:00.003-04:00

Over at Congress Shall Make No Law, Nate recently wrote about requiring voters to show a photo ID. I can't think of another recent issue so marked with ridiculous notions of what the impact of the legislation would be.

Neither of the following two scenarios seems likely:

1) Not requiring a photo ID to vote will result in phony votes being cast, changing the results of an election.

2) Requiring a photo ID will block poor people from voting, changing the results of an election.

I think both are so unlikely as to be ridiculous. Each individual vote counts for so little, that if you have a conspiracy of fake voters casting votes in person, you are involving so many operatives in order to have any impact that you can expect the whole scheme to be blabbed to investigators.

Likewise, the idea of a registered and likely voter who possess no photo ID is absurd. You can not function in modern America without such ID. How do you cash a paycheck, unemployment check or welfare check without one? How likely would someone be to vote in the first place who doesn't possess a Driver's license or a state ID?

The scenario's both sides draw up are absurd. It's not asking much to require voters show an ID, and it's not a big risk to the voting process to have no such requirement.

The real motivation here is both sides think they will see votes slightly tip in their favor. The Democrats in opposition are worried that their voters will be left out, and the Republicans are worried a small group of leftist activists will cheat a few more votes in on their side. This was never about principles.

Kinect and federal spending

2011-07-23T10:53:00.002-04:00

The Freakonomics blog posted a link to Budget Climb, a way of letting people comprehend the size of the the abstract dollar amounts in the federal budget.

Instead of just visualizing the amounts, Budget Climb lets people in front of a display pantomime climbing the size of different budget items over the years. In the video, I noticed a long little box with a light on it under the screen and I checked the website. Sure enough, this is a Kinect application.

I wrote a post back in April outlining how non-game applications of Kinect are a positive externality. At one point it was tempting to update the list with more applications as they became public, but they're so numerous now it's impossible to keep up.

This is a novel educational (and political) application, and we can expect to see more like.

In praise of Matthew Yglesias

2011-07-20T22:12:00.005-04:00

There are a handful of leftie economists I'm eager to quote or draw inspiration from. They include Paul Krugman, Brad Delong, Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias and of course, Lord Keynes himself.

I think Yglesias deserves more praise for being so consistent with his economics while being very serious about his progressive views. He makes a serious attempt to understand his intellectual opponents, and he's not afraid to criticize people on his side. Look at yesterday's post on barber licensing for a perfect example.

I see breaking up the barber cartel and increasing competition for barbering services as a progressive measure, because if you reduce the cost of things that poor people buy, you increase their real living standards. A contrary view espoused in comments is that since barbering is a working class occupation, we ought to favor cartelization as a means of increasing working class income.

But he wasn't done.

But to perhaps gesture at a “theory of politics” issue, I think part of what bugs people about the barber issue is that they’ve developed the implicit view that for progressive politics to succeed we need to raise the social status of “big government,” and that it’s counterproductive to this mission to highlight any misguided “big government” initiatives. It’s acceptable to criticize excessive spending on the military and on prisons, because the conservative critique of “big government” often exempts those institutions. But if conservatives attack “regulation,” then “regulation” must be defended or, when indefensible, ignored.

Well played, good sir, well played. Being automatically against all "deregulation" means tolerating - if not embracing - a lot of bogus regulations that didn't work the way they were supposed to.

TAM talk and links

2011-07-17T22:14:00.010-04:00

This morning I gave my talk at the TAM 9 science conference in Las Vegas. It came out great, and if the organizers decide to put it on YouTube I will include a link. After the break, I've included a version of my paper, along with some expanded answers from the Q&A, but first here are some skeptic-friendly links:

My niche is economic skepticism, with a focus on the economic claims of the "Buy Local" movement. This is my intro post to the general public, and this is my intro post for skeptics.

I covered TAM 7 as a news story when I first started this blog two years ago.

I often write about the economics of video games. This is a social science perspective, such as why console fanboyism is rational, the upcoming moral hazard in Gears of War 3 and my defense of charging to use content already on the disc. It is not the fixed exchange rate of 100 coins for an extra life.

Here are two news stories I've written. There's a ghost hunt that got mentioned on the SGU podcast and piece on a chelation clinic.

I have some classic posts that involve politics that skeptics will find interesting, such as Idiot Hunting and why it's crass to say political opponents often are stupid, evil or insincere. I also have some not-very-nice things to say about modern Marxists.

The media isn't calling your skeptics group, and it's your fault

There's an old expression that says, "Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."

As both a skeptic and a reporter in the mainstream media reporter, I say, forget that. That's terrible advice, and I think it explains why the media is awash with woo stories and the skeptical angle is rarely included.

The good news here is that your local skeptics group has a role to play in getting skepticism in the media. While the national media may prefer to interview someone from the JREF or New England Skeptical Society, your state and local media will want to talk to a local group like yours.

So then why aren't skeptics in the media more?

The popular view of skeptics is that members of the media are too lazy to get all of the facts right and journalists care more about presenting an attention-getting story than a factual one. While these explanations can be true, they are painfully incomplete. Skeptics do not understand how news stories are generated, overestimate the resources news teams work with and misunderstand what motivates reporters.

Being a reporter isn't much different from being a blogger. I have a computer with the Internet, a telephone, a phone book and my car keys. That's it. The only database or files news teams typically have is the archive of past news stories.

We miss important stories all the time because we don't have a perfect way to find out what's going on in the world. There's a lot of luck involved, and we write a lot of stories because someone in the community approached us and told us what's going on.

A lot of media criticism comes from treating reporters as experts who should know better. But most reporters aren't experts. Instead of relying on their own knowledge of a topic, a reporter gathers information and presents it.

In a sense, you can think of a news story as a collection of arguments from authority. Facts are facts because the speaker is an expert. We don't write, "Mr. Trudeau is a fraud." We write, "investigators say Mr. Trudeau is a fraud.

A news report is more like Wikipedia than Encyclopedia Britannica. Britannica articles are planned and written by an expert, while Wikipedia articles emerge through the knowledge of a large group of people. Original research is discouraged. The reporter acts more like a moderator than an author.

Now imagine a Wikipedia article on alternative medicine with no input from skeptical editors. What would that look like? Would you blame Wikipedia, or the skeptical community for not getting involved?

One criticism I often hear is that reporters care more about making a story exciting than they do about having the facts right. We're accused of "sensationalizing" to get more readers at the expense of our accountability.

But that's not how we see it. We want to keep our readers interested in the story by focusing on the most interesting details, and no reporter I've talked to has said they'd be willing to get a few details wrong in order to make the story more exciting. We really do care about accuracy.

As for the charge that we just want to sell more papers, that doesn't add up. There's something called a "principal-agent problem," where the publisher (the prinicipal) has an incentive to make more profits, but the reporter he hires to perform the work for him (the agent) has different motivations and incentives. The average reporter won't see a single extra dime as a result of a popular story.

People don't become reporters just to make money. The job pays too poorly. They care a lot more about presenting information to the world. It doesn't make any sense for someone to choose a career for fulfillment, and then compromise their integrity for zero profit.

Skeptics sometimes say reporters are too lazy to dig into stories, read scientific reports or find a skeptic. I say, we're busy. As a reporter at daily newspaper I'm expected to turn in 11 stories each 40-hour week. With all the downsizing and decreased revenue the media has endured, you can't expect us to spend too much time on every story. It's awful and I wish it could be different, but that is reality.

There are a also a couple of biases working against skeptics that keeps us out of new stories.

One is that skepticism is reactive. Someone has to present woo before we have a chance to knock it down. It's very easy for a reporter to stumble upon a magic healer or a snake oil salesman. These people advertise and generate a lot of attention. They're visible.

But skeptics are invisible. You have a thriving Internet community and blog culture, but the average reporter doesn't know to seek you out when they come across woo.

Try thinking of a reporter as someones grandparent. If the subject of a story appears able to break the laws of nature, why would you expect the reporter to seek out a magician, a neurologist or a funk drummer to comment?

Another bias skeptics face is that reporters are more likely to include sources they can get ahold of on short notice. From my own experience, it's hard to find a skeptic. Local sources are preferred for local news stories, and it's difficult to find local skeptics even when looking for them. And keep in mind most reporters don't know you exist, so they aren't looking for you.

Scientists are also difficult to contact. We mostly talk to academic scientists, and they're always busy with classes, or on break and impossible to track down.

As skeptics, we haven't made a real effort to get the media's attention. We assume the media knows we exist, what subjects we cover and how to get a hold of us. We write blog entries hoping reports will stumble across them by chance. When we do try to contact the media, it's in the form of a letter to the editor.

But we don't want skepticism on the letters page. We want to be in the news stories themselves. Since reporters do not automatically think of skeptic groups when a woo story comes up, it's up to us to get their attention.

With all these factors working against skeptics, why would you ever expect the outcome to be any different?

Think of Public Relations as the art of getting the media to spread your message to the public for you, and the other side has a lot more experience with it. You need to let the media know that we exist, what subjects we cover and how they can reach us quickly. We can do this before a relevant story breaks, as it happens, and quickly after it happens.

Before

Before a story breaks, you can contact the media through in-person visits, phone calls and brief faxes telling them what we do, and suggesting stories like chelation therapy and tax money going to woo businesses. Tell them you live in the area and your group exists to help protect the public from misinformation. Skeptics who are experts should fax news organizations a concise blog article monthly and include a phone number to position themselves as a future source.

During

The moment a skepticism story breaks, you can contact the media as a potential source to offer a contrasting view, or to explain it in a way viewers will understand. You have to get in fast, so phone calls or faxes work best. It's difficult to nail the timing, so don't expect this to come up very often.

After

If a story is already out there, contact the media and offer a "new angle" on the story, one that everyone missed and the public will find interesting. News organizations will keep writing about a subject as long as the public is interested, and skepticism offers a perfect "second day lede." You can also expand and localize the story. When the Iraq government bought dowsing rods as bomb detectors, the media would have been very interested in learning about local schools that bought dowsing rods as drug detectors.

Some young technophiles may think that traditional media is dead, and skeptics should focus on web-based news and forget TV, radio and print.

Perhaps that will be the case one day, but a Pew Research poll from last September suggests for now traditional media is still important. When asked what technologies they observed news from the previous day, 58 percent said television. Results for online, radio and newspapers were each a third. Emergent media like podcasts and social media only added 10 percent. Traditional media is still important, and those same media companies are the ones that produce most online news.

Skeptics spend too much time sitting on the couch, wearing their prom outfit hoping someone will call and invite them. You have the knowledge, You know how to convey it to the public and You need to be the one to make that phone call.

If your skeptics group puts some real work into contacting the media, pitching stories, letting reporters know how to reach you and what sort of issues you can comment on, your message will eventually get in the media. If instead you only write the occasional letter to the editor, don't expect your message to get any further than the letters page.

We've got a better mousetrap, so let's get out there and tell the world.

THE END

Now for the questions.

Someone made the claim that journalists are incompetent, because he's talked to the media and the stories didn't come out the way he wanted them to most of the time. He wanted to know what he should do.

I don't know enough about the situation, but here are some thoughts. Were his expectations too high? Did he expect the other side to only get a token paragraph and have the rest focus on him? Maybe the reporter was confused, did he do a good job of explaining his side, and did he check to make sure the reporter understood? Had he ever made contact with this reporter in the past, or was this a one-phone call relationship?

There are a lot of potential variables here, and I don't know enough about the situation to make that call.

The second was the claim that news agencies exist only to make a profit. The implication is that they will do whatever it takes to draw readers or viewers.

This is ironic because the questioner was asking at a conference that serves as the biggest annual fundraiser for the James Randi Foundation. The same thing could be said about the conference, but the way the conference attracts people is by putting out a great product. That's how the newspaper I work for looks at it. Tabloids do exist, but there's a big range in news companies out there and plenty of them care about.

You could say all companies exist to make money, but that doesn't say anything about the quality of their products.

One final note here. After listening to DJ Grothe speak on the diversity panel, I support the direction he's taking the movement, which includes stopping it from getting involved with political issues that involve value judgments, or that deviate too far from the core criteria of skepticism. He also opposes the push to make skepticism an atheist movement. I am confident the JREF is in good hands.

That totally counts

2011-07-16T11:55:00.000-04:00

I'm endorsed some statements against modern feminism that's likely to get me labeled a misogynist, because nothing says woman-hating like consistently opposing public funding for private matters.

But something came out this weekend on Xbox Live that has revealed my true colors, and with one statement I can show I understand what it's like to be a woman in a man's world. So here goes:

Ms. 'Splosion Man is superior to 'Splosion Man in every single way, and I loved 'Splosion Man.

Because seriously, Ms. 'Splosion Man is awesome.

See you at the next rally, sisters.

Colorblind-friendly games and the free market

2011-07-13T22:53:00.003-04:00

There's an unfortunate color choice in a lot of video games, where halos around friendly characters will be green and the halos around enemies will be red.

That's unfortunate for people like me who are red-green deficient, the most common type of colorblindness. Ever since Baldur's Gate, I've had trouble picking out my enemies in a particularly busy game. I've had to stop playing some flash games because they introduced additional colors that I can't tell apart and sometimes when I try to point things out to other players, I call orange objects yellow and purple objects blue.

Colorblindness can really hold a player back in video games, which is why I was happy to hear Modern Warfare 3 will have a colorblind assist mode.

Video games have a mixed record with providing options to help the colorblind. Peggle chose a blue and orange palette for each major components, the easiest colors to tell apart. The game will also put shapes into blocks to help people like me tell them apart. This is what companies should do.

Meanwhile, the hacking minigame in Bioshock 2 depended on quickly telling red and green apart, a real problem for people like me. It seems abstract puzzle games seem to be better prepared for colorblind problems, while actions games have a spotty history.

So what does this tell us about the free market?

The most obvious thing is the solution is not perfect. Some games are accessible to the colorblind, while some have easily-fixable problems that persist. It's not just video games, the five-to-six player expansion for Settlers of Catan introduced green and brown factions into the game in shades I can't tell apart. That's the visible.

But what's invisible is the roadblocks in game creation that would be required if a top-down model attempted to make all games handicap-friendly. If the door is open for colorblindness, what about disabilities? Would a deaf mode be needed to put comic book sound effects in to let players know when someone is shooting behind them? How far would these demands reach, and what fun games we enjoy now would have been blocked from entering the marketplace?

And what about subtitles in video games? Those help the handicapped as well, and are universally available for games with dialogue or voice-overs, but they weren't put there by a regulation. The demand of customers encouraged companies to include those options

What I expect to see in the future of video games is universal colorblind options for games. It's going to take time, and it won't always be perfect, but it will be motivated by the self-interest of video game companies who just want to satisfy their customers.

NOTE: I forgot to include two examples of government failures to fix colorblind problems. Graphs in public school textbooks and traffic lights. Yes, we do remember what order the yellow and red lights are, but its hard to spot their relative position at night, and single-lamp blinking lights are hard to tell apart.