How To Be Sporty

In an earlier post I made fun of baseball because I found it boring and hinted that it wasn’t a real sport. One commentator asked what I consider a sport to be and implied that since I admit I’m not a fan of sports, I’m not in the best position to define one. But it is because I find no sport-like game interesting that I think I am very qualified to define what a sport is—I lack the vested interest to mold the meaning to favor “my” game. Besides, I don’t live in a cave and I’m well aware of what the idea of a sport should be.

And we should really be honest about this definition. Sports get public funding (such as youth sports) and their own special laws (such as monopoly rules regarding baseball). Since only athletes play sports and people hardly care about participates of just any game, properly defining a sport hold real world consequences. (Of course, government shouldn’t coddle it, sport or not, but this is the world we live in.)

A sport is a type of competitive (the object of the game is to win over an active adversary, such as a computer or a person) game (a strategy-based activity). Specifically, it requires that intense physical exertion is an inherent part of the game.

Thus NASCAR is not a sport; sure there’s strategy and it’s competitive, but physical exertion isn’t inherent in the activity.

Golf isn’t a sport, either. An avid golfer friend of mine pointed out that “real” golfers carry their own clubs, thus it’s physically intense. But carrying stuff around isn’t inherent to the activity. You see someone swing a club at a little ball, they are clearly playing golf. If you see someone haul around a bag of iron sticks, they could be doing anything (like working as a caddy). You can’t claim what’s inherent about your game just so you can call yourself an athlete (which is what a lot of golfers call themselves).

Now baseball’s a pseudo sport because about half the time you’re sitting down waiting to bat. This is different from sitting on the bench as second string. No matter how good you are, you will have to sit down, often for (relatively) long periods of time. Waiting is intrinsic to the game and while parts of it are inherently physically exerting, it’s not a true sport (like basketball or football).

Here’s a quick way to tell if something’s a sport: if practicing it is good exercise (as in you get winded), you are at least halfway there.

The Other France

The French are a people of contradictions. I think it’s a mix of realizing that in order to do well in the global economy they need to work hard while at the same time pursuing the European Dream of free money. Forget two Americas, but there really are two Frances: one wants to work hard, the other wants to fall asleep drinking wine.

In a recent poll, 56% of the French thinks they don’t work enough. This consensus is reached while they protest adding another day of effort to their work year. The vacation day that’s being proposed to be scraped didn’t even exist two years ago.

This attitude is typical of most crowds. Like many environmentalists, socialists, democrats, republicans, industry leaders, NGOs and a myriad of other special interest groups, they want a better society but they’ll be damned if it means they have to pay for it. You really have to work to be this inconsistent.

Going, Going...Yeah It's Still Dull

I know I’m not in the minority when I say this: Baseball is boring. Our national pastime has got to be most mind-numbing national sport (and I use the term “sport” loosely) of all national sports. Hell, cricket is more interesting and I don’t even understand it.

You’d think this thing that’s so important to our national identity would have the freedom to reinvent itself so people might actually watch it. Think again—the House wants the Commerce Department to randomly test players of all pro-sports and get teams to contribute millions to a fund that would run ads discouraging young people from using steroids.

Why can’t there be two baseballs: a boring one, where the teams disallow the use of performance enhancing drugs, and a slightly less boring one, where it is allowed? If everyone agrees on the rules, it’s not cheating and it would lead to better safety measures because we would remove the incentive for secrecy. But I guess our representatives don’t care about keeping our national pastime alive.

Centuries of the Blame Game

While driving around today I noticed a pick-up with a Confederate flag instead of a front license plate. Considering both Iowa and nearby Illinois were both free states, this was rather odd.

But it got me thinking about a cartoon I saw some years ago when Virginia wanted to hoist the Confederate flag over their state capital building. It depicted a trio of Afro-Americans looking on at a group waving the symbol of the Confederacy. One said, “I wish people would stop living in the past.” All of them were holding signs demanding reparations.

History’s useful for perspective (something we are genuinely lacking), but it’s often the target of obsession. Not only do people think things were better then, they use long-standing history to justify whatever they want and in doing so, repeat the evils they are trying to correct for. Afro-Americans used it to justify affirmative action, effectively legalizing racism. Zionists used it to justify Israel, kicking out hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and igniting one of the worst continuous conflicts in human history. Palestinians are now using ancient history to justify kicking out Israelis. Of course slavery and oppression are horrible things but we can't let its past consume our future.

I have no problem in assigning compensation with regards to recent atrocities (like, say, the Holocaust), but these others conflicts are hundreds or thousands of years old. That’s simply too long to flatly blame someone’s ancestors for your problems—too many thing happen in the meantime to prove guilt. Stop living in the past!

All I Ever Needed To Know I Learned From Watching Prices

I just finished watching an episode of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit of which they debunk the myth that recycling is good for the planet. The reality is it takes more resources (time, energy and so on) to recycle trash than to simply throw it away and make stuff from scratch. I’m not sure if P&T realize it or not, but they offered two pieces of evidence that alone demonstrates this truth.

This first one is as follows: It costs $50-$60 a ton to throw garbage away in a landfill. It costs $150 a ton to recycle it.

Prices are determined by supply and demand. If an input has a high demand and/or a low supply (compared to alternatives), its price will be higher. But we don’t care about just one input (like energy costs or landfill space); we care about all of them. The price for a good captures all the scarcity of the inputs for that good. The higher the price, the scarcer the inputs as a whole are, and the more society looses when the good is produced. (This only works if inputs come from privately-held property, and for the purposes of the topic, this holds true.)

Note that if one input becomes scarcer, the overall price increases (all things held equal). If it becomes dangerously scarce, the price will increase a lot. Thus when environmentalists say we are incredibly low on landfill space, we know they are lying. If it were true, the price of throwing away garbage would skyrocket beyond recycling. It has never done that.

The second bit of evidence involves the other side of recycling: material creation (as opposed to disposal). It costs more to create resources from recycled inputs than from virgin inputs (except for aluminum cans).

Again, this difference in price tells us all that we need to know. The key distinction between recycled products and virgin products is the origin of the core material (such as trees versus paper to make paper). Since the other factors of price are so similar, comparing prices is the same as comparing the costs of each strategy to society as a whole. If one of these valued virgin inputs becomes dangerously scarce, the price will reveal that by becoming more expensive than recycling.

The main input for paper, for example, are trees (the vast majority of which are grown on private land just so they can be turned into paper). If trees were as scarce as environmentalists claim they are, then the price would be so high it would be cheaper to recycle newspaper. The same goes for just about anything else.

Aluminum, on the other hand, is comparatively more expensive to extract and manufacture, which is why recycling those cans isn’t only cheap, it nets a profit. It’s not a coincidence that this is the only aspect of the recycling phenomenon that didn’t need some of the eight billion dollars of subsides that recycling programs require every year to stay afloat.

Recycling isn’t profitable, thus it doesn’t add anything to the economy or to the environment.

Earth Day Footprints

In contradicting their mantra that “Earth Day is everyday,” Greens are making a big fuss this twenty-second about how angry our planet is. As the world turns to the 35th anniversary of the day we all complain about the environment, be prepared to hear a lot about finite resources and “ecological footprints.”

Both concepts demonstrate a juvenile understanding of the economy (for the former) and the environment (for the latter). I’ve explained many times that the amount of resources on the planet doesn’t matter—the important concept is how scarce they are, and they are becoming less scarce. The economy is a living thing and it adapts as needs change.

Ecological footprints are a little different, but people misunderstand their role for similar reasons. According to optimumpopulation.org, an eco footprint is “the process of determining the bioproductive area that a person or a population needs in order to sustain a specified lifestyle.” The explanation continues:

There are two sides to ecological footprinting - supply and demand (of renewable resources).
-An ecological footprint = demand for (and impacts on) biological product, which is defined as the area (mostly land) needed for that product.
-Biological productivity (bioproductivity) or biocapacity = supply of biological product (biomass).

This straightforward idea assumes if we leave a “footprint” (take in more than we put out), we are doing harm to the environment. Essentially, it assumes our ecosystem is perfectly balanced and every species has a vital role to play. This runs contrary to the theory of evolution which describes nature as a messy, creative destructive process that’s happening all around us. The planet is designed to take a beating.

Does that mean we should slap it around just for fun? Of course not. But we don’t need organizations making sure we minimize our impact. Combined with free markets and private property, ecological footprints have about as much impact as real footprints.

Parks for Turks

I’m spending the next few days writing cover letters to potential employees and I was recently reminded of a nasty little law I learned about while studying in Istanbul.

If you ever go to Turkey’s biggest city, you’ll notice something annoying immediately. It’s rather a pain to get anywhere because the metropolis is so spread out. My Turkish friends told me the city extends the entirety of both peninsulas it sits on. When I first left the city on a bus trip, I learned this exaggeration is well justified.

The reason for this sprawl is quite clear—most buildings in the city never reach up more than fifteen or so stories (with the exception of one area of the city where modern hotels rise like trees on a well-cut lawn). But why this limit? I asked a friend about it and she said there was a law against skyscrapers. (Well, she didn’t use the word “skyscrapers” because she didn’t know it, though her English vocabulary was very extensive. I found that to be an interesting cultural consequence of the law.)

She attributed the law to Turks’ love for green spaces. I tried to explain to her that the law doesn’t increase the amount of parks and gardens, it actually decreases. Floor limits require people to use more land than they normally would to make a certain amount of space. I illustrated this with a pair of glasses. First, they were both directly on the table and then I stacked one on top of the either, leaving an empty space for “development.”

She still wasn’t convinced and she continued to be unconvinced after I used this same logic to explain how Manhattan Island—some of the most expensive real estate in the world—is home to no less than seven parks (including Central Park which covers 6% of Manhattan). She then added that tall buildings are ugly, referencing the skyscrapers in the district that’s the exception to the rule. Of course that’s ugly—there are only a few such buildings. A good skyline has many. Think how different Manhattan would look if the only towering edifice was the Chrysler Building.

It’s instinctive to think that creating public goods (including beauty and natural spaces) require laws. There’s no doubt that the developing world’s biggest barrier is learning to surpass this instinct, even when it comes to trees.

Statebusters II

A few months ago I wrote an article about how the movie Ghostbusters has a strong libertarian theme. Last night I finally got around to renting Ghostbusters II and I’m proud to say they didn’t stray from their roots.

In the opening scenes, we learn the ghostbusters’ business ended because they were sued for saving the city (just like in The Incredibles). But it wasn’t private citizens or even private businesses that created the legal troubles. It was the government. “[We] ended up getting sued by every state, county and city agency in New York.” -Winston

A few scenes later we learn the city didn’t even pay the ghostbusters for services rendered. When Bill Murray’s character tried to talk to the mayor about being screwed over, Jack Hardemeyer, the mayor’s assistant, intercepted him. The mayor’s up for re-election and doesn’t want to be associated with the once-heroes. Power is more important than paying what’s owed.

While in court for tearing up 1st avenue (granted, they shouldn’t have done that), we learn just how much the government is pushing them around. The judge begins the trial by saying he doesn’t believe in ghosts and denies any reference to them during the case (odd because five years ago, the city was attacked by a giant marshmallow man, but I guess the judge thought that was just the Michelin guy on steroids). Then we learn the ghostbusters have a judicial restraining order that bars them from performing services as paranormal investigators or eliminators. It’s like keeping a firefighter away from a burning building because last time he put out a raging inferno he got the carpet wet.

Minutes later the judge rescinded the order, not because it was the right thing to do but because he was being attacked by ghosts and needed their help. So much for judges being completely neutral.

This allows the ghostbusters to restart their old business, which they use as a jumping point to better investigate the growing evil presence in the city. After they figure out what’s going on, they go see the mayor to warn him. He waves them off. The wormy assistant takes this as an opportunity to have the ghostbusters committed so they wouldn’t hurt the mayor’s re-election. Hardemeyer’s a typical bureaucrat, pushing around other people for greater power and prestige.

The mayor releases them only after it really does look like the world’s about to end. He uses the ghostbusters—the world’s best chance—as a last resort, endangering the entire planet so he doesn’t have to admit he was wrong to ignore their warnings. Yet even in this darkest hour, the bureaucrat tries to convince the mayor otherwise. Thankfully, it didn’t work.

Ghostbusters II builds on the importance of local knowledge and liberated societies. Authorities are more often a barrier than an ally and are willing to ignore overwhelming evidence if it suits their needs. For heroes to be heroes they need more freedom, not less.

A Little Bit of Sanity

Someone at Wiki wrote this on my talk page concerning my contributions to the global warming article.

Thanks for trying, Atlastawake. Be aware that enlightening people who have been trained to accept what they have already been told, can be difficult. I think Plato mentioned something about this difficulty with his parable of the cave. And sometimes a paradigm shift can be too painful to contemplate. "How could it possibly be that so much of what I believe is a lie?" It's so much easier to belittle the annoying revealers than to examine the evidence they reveal.

It's like sociologists studying the new religious movements. If they don't join the anti-cult movement in denouncing the "cults", then they must be "cult apologists". The possibility that objective research doesn't support the "mind control" theory which justifies deprogramming is just too painful to face, for some people. (At least in the cult articles, we contributors are on good terms. I don't know why it's not like that in the climate articles.) -- Uncle Ed (talk) 20:45, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

A Week of Waste

It’s National Parks Week (apparently) so I thought I’d celebrate it by doing a little investigating.

The International Paper Company privately holds tracks of land to grow trees for production. The largest of these acreages is in the mid-South region at 1.2 million acres. While the trees grow, the company sells the use of the land for purposes of camping, hunting, fishing and hiking adding up to $5.5 million dollars (25% of revenue). That’s a huge incentive to keep the forest sustainable and the firm even cuts trees down in such a way that it maintains wildlife cover.

Some may say that this is a relatively small amount of land and nature needs more room. But if this little-known bit of forest was a national park it would be the tenth largest by acre, tied with the Grand Canyon. Privatizing national parks is most certainly a profitable and environmentally sound business opportunity.

Contrast this success story with the National Park of American Samoa: 9,000 acres of rainforest and coral. In 2003, it received over $1.2 million of taxpayer money for its operating costs. Hot Springs, the only national park smaller than American Samoa, had over 1.5 million visitors (with a budget of about $3.36 million). Black Canyon of the Gunnison (whose budget barely edges over one million) had about 165,000 visitors. So how many did American Samoa had? 200,000? 500,000?

Try 366. That’s right, just 366 people: an average of one person a day, at the cost of $3,478 per person. You can rent whole floors of hotels for less.

Assuming that a private company couldn’t cut the park’s cost (unlikely because federally funded parks have to wade through costly requirements, among other reasons) and assuming advertising wouldn’t boost attendance (also unlikely; the place is gorgeous) then this private park would probably go out of business. If this happened, environmentalists would claim this is why the park has to be national—its value is so high, it has to be preserved no matter what. Of course if they really believed that, they would have shelled out the four grand for admission.

Hollywood Libertarians

"Hollywood liberals" is a term conservatives like to throw around when they want to describe the source of some new idea or fad or Washington policy. “This uproar is nothing but the work of Hollywood liberals,” “The only people telling you this is okay is just a bunch of Hollywood liberals,” “The Democrats are too busy trying to please some Hollywood liberals” and so on.

They make it sound like there’s a subculture in the Democratic party whose values and ideologies are fundamentally different from the rest of it, so much that it needs a special name. But really there’s nothing ideologically distinctive about this group. A Hollywood liberal is just a left-winger that’s rich, good-looking, has legions of fans and lives (more or less) in Hollywood. Sounds like someone’s just jealous.

But it’s true that a lot of celebrities are Democrats, especially the ones in Hollywood. And I’ve discovered that some of their core beliefs “rub off” on the scant few libertarian counterparts they interact with. While a Hollywood liberal is just some rhetoric bullshit, a Hollywood libertarian really means something.

I’ve discovered this while watching Real Time with Bill Maher (a self-described libertarian) on the night he had Jason Alexander (another libertarian) on the show. At the end, Bill brought up greed and how bad it is that all companies care about is “hitting the numbers.” Jason built on that and argued that it was because we are too short sighted and we don’t plan enough. We think too much in the short term. Later he suggested the government should set energy goals in reducing our dependency of oil.

Bill then moved the conversation to why companies have to grow: “It seems like this is the only country in the world where just doing well is not enough. No corporation can just do as well as they did last quarter. We always have to have growth.” Growth, of course, is a good thing. That’s why people want it. But Bill’s rather suspicious of corporations.

In general, a Hollywood libertarian shares these values with their liberal counterparts:
-The government is the best tool to protect the environment.
-People are too greedy and that’s inherently bad; government should pull it back via taxes (specifically progressive taxes and the estate tax).
-National health care is a good idea, even though it’s a disaster in Canada.
-Schooling is the government’s business and public schools need more funding.
-As a nation we should be concerned about outsourcing and foreign competition.
-Corporations are poisoning us (via pesticides and other chemicals).

This is a working list and is mostly generated from Bill Maher (there are few Hollywood libertarians and Bill’s the only one I know that talks about politics for a living). I really do admire Bill Maher—he has a lot of good thoughts and was my early introduction to libertarianism. But he’s also pretty damn Hollywood.

Market Saints

Yesterday I wandered into Suncoast looking to use a five dollar gift certificate I’ve been holding for a few months. I wanted to expand my movie collect but I didn’t want to spend more than ten bucks (in other words, no more than fifteen on the tag).

After about twenty minutes of wandering around the store I decided on the beloved classic, Boondock Saints (which is a kick-ass movie by all measures). I went to the cashier to pay for it only to discover it’s already five dollars off. With the gift certificate, I got the DVD for less than a value meal. Woot to the free market!

The War Between the Stars

The line for Star Wars III begins. Makes me wish I was in a city that was large enough to have the big dorks that would camp out at the theater so I could get a Spock costume and flick them all off.

Or at the very least, drive by and tell them to enjoy their “Star Trek” movie. That would really piss them off.

I gotta respect Star Wars, though. It’s certainly more realistic than its counterpart. A sword made of light? Okay. The Force? Sure. Socialism that works? I don’t think so.

A Contract Is a Contract Is a Contract

Skyler Stone is a young man who decided a long time ago he would be a con man. For many years he lied to get free stuff so he wouldn’t have to actually get a job.

I’m very rarely in favor of government intervention in our daily lives but I do have a problem with this. Con men violate verbal contracts (whether such a contract is legally binding in a local state in question is irrelevant). Because contracts are a basic tool of a well functioning extended order, ignoring them does a disservice to the economy (on a local, national and global level). Ensuring they are fulfilled is a job of the government.

Currently Mr. Stone has a new show on Comedy Central unimaginatively called Con, ironically transforming someone who takes away from the functionality of the economy to someone who contributes to it by taking away from it. I’m not sure if there’s a net loss or a net gain in this matter.

But I’m finding that as I watch this show, it demonstrates how well the economy works because the contract is so trusted. The victims readily believe his lies. While part of that stems from his ability to lie, another part is that the conned have no reason not to believe him. It may not seem this way from what we hear on the news magazines but breaches of contracts are pretty damn rare.

When I go through the drive thru, I give my money before I get my food. I have never encountered or heard of a time when a fast food place collected the cash but refused to live up to their end of the bargain (by denying the Happy Meal or whatever people are eating now).

When you pay for furniture and ask for it to be delivered, we rarely consider that the store will never show. We might fear that they will be late, but never completely absent.

And if I were to finally receive a letter from George Mason telling that I was, say, accepted to their PhD program, I wouldn’t consider that they would deny me entrance when the semester began (assuming I could pay for it).

These are all small exchanges between economic agents that are repeated in some fashion a million times everyday. When it comes to big projects—such as the construction of a building—at least one party involved is a lot more careful because they are on unfamiliar ground. That’s why Mr. Stone focuses his lies on everyday verbal or implied contracts—we inherently trust them. Because the economy works so well, so do his cons.

49 Down.....

I heard on the radio this morning that Montana recently became the 49th state to outlaw open alcohol containers in moving vehicles (Mississippi being last in line).

Open container laws always kind of rub me the wrong way. Having an open container doesn’t mean you’ve been drinking and driving. I can understand it usually means a drunk driver, but that’s what breathalyzers are for.

But there are everyday scenarios where A does not follow to B so nicely. What about bringing home a half-finished bottle of wine you brought to a party? Or transporting cans to the store for recycling but one of them wasn’t quite empty? Should one get a ticket because he absent-mindedly forgot to finish his drink at a tailgate party? Or if friends are having a picnic and it suddenly starts raining, should they be punished because in their haste they brought their drinks into the car and then forgot about them?

I’m not a drinker myself so I could only imagine the myriad possibilities where an open container is justified. Is it really worth punishing everyone especially since we have the technology to better separate the legitimate lawbreakers from the victims of circumstance? Of course not.

The Sweet Smell of Death

Visiting college friends is a lot of fun, but it certainly has its disadvantages. For example, if you’re at war and you leave, the enemy has a golden chance to gain significant ground.

The day after I got back from Beloit, I discovered an ant crawling along my desk. Then I saw another on the floor. Then another. Then another. I followed a short path to the bathroom floor, which was crawling with the suckers. Twenty or thirty easily. As soon as I realized how bad it was, I got into my car and drove to a nearby hardware store. It was eight o’clock at night.

What traversed over the next hour was a vicious retaliation as I defended the home land. Following the strategies on the Raid can, I soaked them until the floors where slick with poison and after I swept up the bodies and mopped the floor, I secured a perimeter in the bathroom. (Where I occasionally see one or two of the suckers.) I used a whole can.

I would like to thank Raid for supplying the weaponry. Not only did they include the strategy, the spray also comes in two scents (plus a scentless). I opted for Country Fresh, making my victory that much sweeter.

A New New Deal?

Thomas Friedman was one The Daily Show tonight plugging his new book, The World Is Flat. The economic world today, Friedman says, is much like what people once thought the physical was: flat. We now live in a world where technology has linked in such a way that more people have a better chance at equal opportunity. Geniuses in Beijing can be just as useful as those in New York because they can bypass their poor economies and oppressive governments to contribute to the economy at large via Internet, satellite communication and other advanced tools.

This can only be a good thing. Once, brilliant people who could make the world better were shut out from it. Now they can enter the discourse and add their passion and intellect to society at large. With this extra help, we can hasten the discovery of a cure for cancer, enrich cultures across the board or build wonders far greater than anyone has ever dreamed.

And yet, Friedman insists there’s a dark cloud: the country needs to continue the pursuit of knowledge and technology. And we could be in danger of falling behind. He even says we need a “New New Deal” for these changing times. “When was the last time you met a twelve-year-old kid that wanted to be an engineer?” he asked anchorman Jon Stewart. It’s good rhetoric, but a pretty useless question when you think about it. Most people don’t know what they want to do when they’re twelve. (I wanted to be a magician that did real magic.) Most people don’t even know what they’ll do when they enter college. (I was originally going to major in English.) The strength of our economy is embodied by our ability to adapt and considering we are still the number one source for technological advancements across the board, we really have nothing to worry about.

But somehow, somehow, Friedman made a transition from this to energy independence. There’s a valid facet of concerning about where we get our energy (as in oil) from (because it comes from corrupt and oppressive governments). But that’s becoming less and less significant as we expand our definition of oil, new countries export it and we create and improve alternatives. This captures what’s wrong with Friedman’s vaguely nationalistic anxieties about the level playing field because it doesn’t really matter where we get the good from, just as long as we get it competitively. Who cares if we don’t create all the new technology in the world? We’ll still get it. Who cares if we’ll get most of our energy from abroad? We’ll still get it. Wanting a stable economy free from unstable and tyrannical governments is one thing—I’m on board with that. Trying to get it by encouraging self-sufficiently (in technology or energy) is quite another. It won’t make us wealthier, only busier.

Make Your Economy Happy

On my way home from work yesterday, I heard a radio commercial brought to me by (if memory recalls correctly) the Department of Health and Human Services. Apparently the government has amazing news for us: walking is good for our health.

Now you could say that our health is important (no argument there) and we needs someone to remind us of ways to improve it (agreed). But why does it have to be a government agency? There is not a single method of improving our health that would not benefit from a product or service generated privately. Thus those firms that provide the service could advertise the importance of health and sell their product at the same time.

Case in point: Even something as mundane as drinking more water is encouraged by private industry. Aquafina is running commercials that remind us of the importance of water in our daily diet. Their slogan: Make Your Body Happy.

Fallacy 2

In response to my earlier question, David has suggested that we refer to the fallacy as "the fallacy of the unclaimed dollar." It comes from a joke:

Two economists are walking down the street. One sees a dollar lying on the sidewalk, and remarks on it. The other economist scoffs, and tells the other that his mind must be playing tricks on him. "If there were a dollar there, someone would have picked it up!"

It is my hope that, years from now, someone will credit Law, Legislation, and Lunacy for the naming of the Fallacy of the Unclaimed Dollar.

All the Fallacies, Baby

People make all kinds of mistakes. One of the more popular songs the kids are listening to is “Rich Girl” by Gwen Stefani. Its refrain goes like this:

If I was a rich girl (Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na)
See, I'd have all the money in the world, if I was a wealthy girl
No man could test me, impress me, my cash flow would never ever end
Cause I'd have all the money in the world, if I was a wealthy girl

On two accounts Gwen mixes up her cause and effect, committing the Casual Fallacy of Wrong Direction.

-Just because you are rich does not imply that you have all the money in the world. I can think of lots of rich people that do not fulfill the criteria (like, all of them).

-Just because you have all the money in the world does not imply that quantity is infinite. In fact, the amount of money is a set comprised of a limited number of elements, thus it is actually finite.

Most people would agree that it’s simply a matter of direction and the reverse (if I had all the money in the world, I would be a wealthy girl) is logically valid—assuming "I" is a young female). Casually speaking, I would agree with them.

But let’s be anal retentive economists and see if there’s a way to make it invalid. Money is often quantified into four broad categories: M0, M1, M2 and M3 (economists aren’t very creative). Each one of these definitions can be applied to different currencies. Suppose Gwen is talking about M0—all cash and coin in circulation—of, say, the Soviet ruble. Since the Soviet ruble is no longer in circulation, that total is zero. Having all the money in the world can result in no change to your bank account. If you have no other holdings, then you certainly are not rich even with the inclusion of these rubles.

She also made the Inductive Fallacy of Hasty Generalization when she said “No man could test me, impress me” as a result of her theoretical limitless funds. Perhaps in her experience all the men she’s encounter have been intimidated by wealth but I doubt she’s been tested by a large enough portion of the population to logically make that conclusion (especially since all we need is one case that makes the assertion invalid). However, it’s reasonable to conclude a proportion of men could not test nor impress her if she was wealthy, which I think she is.

To make her song logically valid to our anal retentive selves, it would have to go a little something like this:

Suppose I was a rich girl (Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na)
Now suppose I have all the legal tender in the world (assuming that quantity of legal tender represents a significant proportion of economic activity and the economy in question is widely defined), thus I would be a wealthy girl
A larger portion of men couldn’t test me, nor could they impress me, my cash flow would be larger than possibly most
Because I'd have all the legal tender in the world (assuming that quantity of legal tender represents a significant proportion of economic activity and the economy in question is widely defined), I would be a wealthy girl

Logical errors may make result in poor understanding, but they are certainly useful in music.

Note: I'm aware that "widely defined" and "a significant proportion" are not terms appropriate to logical agruments but the vagueness of the word "wealthy" barred me from constructing a more precise logical statement.

Bonus Question: There is an economic argument that questions the validity of my claim that even after correcting for Wrong Direction and Hasty Generalization, the lyrics still don't logically hold. What's the argument?

Education: A Libertarians's Concern about Compulsion

A key factor that affects the libertarian outlook is compulsion. Compulsion in a philosophic sense is similar to determinism. In legal terms, compulsion is when you break the law because someone was holding a gun to the head of your child. Dr. John Marks, a psychologist writing for the Libertarian Alliance wrote of achieving a so-called good by compulsion:

“Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. To be "cured" against one's will of conditions we may not regard as diseases is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason and never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” [1]

Perhaps the most obvious illustration of compulsion today is public education [2]. Most any Introduction to Teaching textbook will cite Massachusetts as the “cradle of education.” This is as much propaganda as anything, since education had been formalized throughout Europe in schools (universities or grammar) since around 800 A.D, and before that (albeit somewhat less formally) throughout ancient Greece and Rome. What Massachusetts, and more particularly the Calvinist-inclined Massachusetts Bay Colony (MBC) did in 1642 was to make public education compulsory. It is true that during this period under John Winthrop the MBC was a theocracy, being in nature neither democratic nor republican, and not necessarily akin to Massachusetts or America today. However, it was their philosophy of public education that quickly disseminated throughout America as the South and West were opened to settlement; and it was in this way that Massachusetts earned its reputation as the cradle of education. By 1850 every state was supporting a network of public schools, and by 1900 nearly every state in the union was imposing compulsion.

It is not my intent to launch into the deeply divided debate over public education today. However, it should be noted that the original proponents of public education were very often socialist activists who, like Plato, saw socialism and public education as bedfellows. For example, socialist Robert Dale Owens, the infamous 19^th socialist agitator, comments:

In republican schools, there must be no temptation to the growth of aristocratic prejudices. The pupils must learn to consider themselves as fellow citizens, as equals. Respect ought not to paid to riches, or withheld from poverty. Yet, if the children from these state Schools are to go every evening, the one to his wealthy parent’s soft carpeted drawing room, and the other to its poor father’s or widowed mother’s comfortless cabin, will they return the next day as friends and equals?

Thankfully, the idea of children becoming full-time state wards never materialized in this country. But it is clear that many of the early figures who championed public schools also advocated compulsory attendance at those same schools; and that they viewed the public school more as a tool of social engineering and control than of education per say. The libertarian, on the other hand, does not oppose the principle of public schools in and of themselves; indeed, free schools for those unable to afford a private education has long been part of communities in both Europe and America. The objection arises when the state attempts to use its monopoly of coercion to force attendance at their schools (i.e. compulsion), and/or when the state attempts to extend its monopoly over education itself (as with restricting homeschooling or regulating the curriculum of private schools). And of course, especially onerous to most libertarians is being forced to support financially the vast network of public schools through burdensome property taxes, and to pay evermore oppressive levels of local income tax to offset persistent public school-induced bond levy debt. And let us not forget the various “school taxes” that subtly appear in utility bills, county and city assessments, and an ever rising federal tax burden.

Many Libertarians would probably be satisfied to “transfer control of education from bureaucrats to parents and teachers and encourage alternatives to the public school monopoly.” In fact, the Libertarian Party platform calls for a “true market in education – one in which parents and students would not be stuck with a bad local school, because they could choose another; measures such as tax credits so that parents will have the financial ability to choose among schools; financial incentives for businesses to help fund schools and for individuals to support students other than their own children; and the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, which spends billions on education and educates no one [3]. As usual, the prevailing theme is the government’s problematic use of its monopolistic power of legislation and coercion.

As Rothbard has rightly pointed out, the state has become in the public mind so synonymous with the services it provides “that an attack on State financing appears to many people as an attack on the service itself. Thus if one maintains that the State should not supply court services, and that private enterprise on the market could supply such service more efficiently as well as more morally, people tend to think of this as denying the importance of the courts themselves [4].” I think we clearly see this today with regards to our public schools. If libertarians are ever to gain ground in the struggle for minds and worldviews, as important as it is for we libertarians to focus on political and economic issues, education is perhaps fundamentally even more important to our future.

Sources

[1] Marks, John, “Political Notes No. 82” The Drug Laws: A Case of Collective Psychosis (London: Libertarian Alliance, 1993) http://www.capital.demon.co.uk/LA/political/druglaws.txt

[2] Discussion and quotes from: Rothbard, Murray N., Education: Free & Compulsory (Auburn: Mises, 1999) 37-55

[3] Libertarian Party homepage

[4] Rothbard, Manifesto 194

Hot, Sweaty, Dirty....Conversations (Properly Censored, Of Course)

You know what we really need? Government in our life, especially our sex life. It’s not strange enough to talk to the parents about this most personal of activities. Luckily, our tax dollars let us get the whole deal from our government (who then encourage our parents to talk to us).

It’s a good thing, too, because now we know the proper progression of intimacy.

We also learn that condoms are too unreliable and marriage is a magical force that kills STDs.

And did you know that if your kid is gay you should seek a counselor because it may be just so traumatizing?

Thankfully government is giving advice about who to date so I’m not tempted to go gay.

And while parents are encouraged to engage in open and honest communication, our government is also suggesting that parents should spy on their kids. Maybe so they can have enough information to start a conversation. (I understand you recently visited hotasiangirls.com, son. You want to talk about it?) The conversation may be easier than one thinks; the government tells us over half of all teens think teens should be abstinence. I bet they’d advocate vasectomies, too.

And parents wonder why teens rebel.

Mad Props to Mike for the heads up.

Making Cheap Cheaper

Yesterday my favorite morning show, Dwyer & Michaels, got on the topic of earned deals. Seems one of them has a relative that wrangled a major company (AOL I think) into giving him a better deal. All he had to do was ask.

So hosts wanted to know how many of their listeners earned themselves good deals. Here’s a (small) sampling.

- A 60% reduction in monthly payments for internet from AOL.
- A two point reduction for a credit card rate.
- Free tickets to Six Flags to stay with AOL.
- A check for $125 for switching phone companies.
- 25% (instead of 10%) off that day’s purchase for signing up for the store’s club card.
- A zero percent rate for credit cards by switching from card to card and taking advantage of the intro rate.

All of these bonuses came simply from asking for it (except the last one, which carries some risk via your credit report and requires continuous effort). People would simply call up the company, tell them they think they deserve a better rate and, after being passed around to a few people, get it. It doesn’t take very long, either. Over the course of the bit, a listener got inspired and called AOL. By the end of the segment, he had a lower monthly fee (from the $30s to $9.95).

Capitalism is great for the vast majority of society and for those who are willing to work at it, it can be even better. Thanks to a small government, competition is fierce. All it takes on your part is a bit of backbone and some patience.

Scenes from the Front: Mold

By: Charles J. Sykes

The scene is a school board meeting of a semirural Midwestern community. Parents have mobilized opposition to the new Outcome Based Education curriculum in the district and a junior high teacher has been designated to reassure them. She is neither shrill nor doctrinaire. In fact, she is every good teacher you ever had.

She assures the parents how much she cares about their children, and obviously means it. But she wants to set the record straight: She wants to teach her students more, not less, and all this talk about “dumbing down” the curriculum misses the point. Her goal, she says, is to try to teach “what is important for kids to know.” That means ditching much of the traditional – useless – science curriculum, such as teaching “the names of the nine planets and how far they are from the sun, “ which she calls “facts that are not applied; facts that are not used.”

She explains that she and other junior high science teachers have diligently tried to determine what exactly is scientifically “important.” To determine this, she says proudly, they consulted experts. In this case high school science teachers.

The real change, she says enthusiastically, is that from now on she and other teachers will approach science from a “whole learning” perspective. By this she means she will integrate other subjects into science. For example, teachers now “incorporate writing and reading into science.” She appears to genuinely believe that this is a remarkable innovation. (The work of Ptolemy, Descartes, and William James apparently don’t count. They are, needless to say, also not part of her curriculum.)

“Education practices,” she insists, “have to meet where we are going.” The lights dim and she begins a slide presentation on where, apparently, we are going. She wants to show the parents children “doing things.” Despite what they may have heard, the children aren’t doing anything “kinky or weird.”

Just dull and trivial.

She doesn’t see it that way. She insists that the new hands-on science is exciting, enriched, packed with higher-order thinking skills. No longer do kids sit neatly in rows and have rote facts jammed into their heads; in her classrooms, the children are doing science themselves.

They grow mold.

In poster-board presentation after poster-board presentation students demonstrate: How We Grew Mold.

There was, teacher says, “a lot of communication and a lot of observation. We really emphasized the higher order thinking skills.” What she meant, of course, was that they talked about mold, looked at mold, and compared mold. This was no mere rote mold. Not simply information about mold. This was higher order mold.

Of course, mold does have its illustrious place in the annals of science. But the teacher makes no mention of penicillin or the story of its remarkable discovery through mold. The emphasis here is on relevance. Reads one poster board: Moldy Pizza and Mold.

“We know how to grow it,” she tells the parents. “We know hot to avoid it.” This, no doubt, is an example of how higher-order thinking skills can be applied in, say, the refrigerators of college dorms. For the teacher this “usefulness” is in obvious contrast to the frivolous and unnecessary study of – and this is her example – the solar system, the knowledge of which cannot be applied to lives as conveniently as the mastery of the properties of mold.

Contemporary educators are convinced, as were their fathers and grandfathers in progressive education, that the driving force behind education must be the interest of the child. It is an article of faith that kids can only be engaged in the study of science or history if it is made directly relevant to their own lives. But the same folks who talk so much about making learning “interesting” also imagine that mold is more likely to fire a child’s imagination than space.

Outside of the classroom, youngsters are devoted fans of Star Trek and Star Wars; they understand the difference between impulse power and warp speed; they devour science fiction novels; video games beyond number presuppose intergalactic travel. There are no popular video games based on mold.

Excerpted from: Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves but Can’t Read, Write, or Add. Charles J. Sykes, St. Martin’s Press, 1995.

GMU Update

After about half a week of vainly trying to get a hold of Pete Boettke (who wrote in an e-mail recently that I could call him if I had any questions), I got an e-mail from GMU. Apparently he’s re-reviewed my application and put me on the wait list for the PhD program, which is awesome. That’s the good news: I still might get into the PhD program.

Apparently the GMU people are trying to get as many waitlisted into the program and those that don’t get passed on to a different group so they can be considered for the masters. That’s the bad news: I might not get into either.

BUT, apparently my constant nagging earned me something as Pete has taken an interest in me and they’ve “flagged” my file, which means they’re going to try harder to get me in. How much harder and how many others are flagged, I don’t know. But my chances are better than they were last week. That’s the good news.

But it seems that at the end of each day, I actually know less and my future seems more uncertain. Why do I get the feeling I’m the victim of some kind of prank?

Fallacy

Of late I have been discussing with a friend some possibilities for revamping the curriculum and methods of teaching at Beloit College. This is mainly a thought experiment.

My latest response began like this:

It seems to me that if all these ideas are as viable and workable as you claim, they would have been tried by now. Doesn't the fact that no college has a curriculum like you want suggest that the market has determined that this is not the best outcome?

I should be ashamed of myself, and I am. I adhere to what I consider truth: that markets solve problems, and when a problem exists the market actively works to solve it. However, I took it a step too far in assuming that if the market (in this case, the college system) had yet to try something, then it was hardly worth looking at. This logic of course precludes all forms of entrepreneurship. To say that an idea is not workable because if it were, then "the market would have already done that" ignores that the market is a dynamic process. I am not the only one to commit this fallacy (heck, I probably find myself guilty of it regularly). How many times has a student been told that a research topic, if valuable, would have already been researched? I have seen (and probably done it myself) friends dismiss new products under the guise that they can't possibly be innovative.

And of course my favorite tale is one of a teacher I once had, who claimed with absolute sincerity, that there was nothing new that could be thought of or done; all the "newness" was exhausted.

Clearly, this is a fallacy of thought. It is especially a fallacy of economic thought. But I do not know what to call it. The fallacy of premature dismissal? Ideas?

Them Crazy Canadians

Mike sent me this article to cheer me up. My favorite part is that their health care system is so bad, Canadians are being sent to the states to get cared for. Makes you think what they would do if we followed their "amazing" system.

Woot!...Or Not So Much

“Woot!” was the original title I was going to use when I found out GMU accepted my application for their PhD program. I was so sure I’d get in I can’t even list all the things I had going for me (notably the recommendation and help with the application from a well-respected alum of program). Then I called them today to ask why my application status seems to be stuck on “Complete ready for review,” especially since I had no idea what that meant. They told me the committee turned down my application.

Looking back, I think the number one thing I did wrong was turn it in too late. Even though it was still months before the deadline, if they got it December 1st instead of December 21st (especially since that’s four days before Christmas) things might have been very different. Who knows?

So now I’m taken aback and not sure what to do except start looking for jobs and try to figure out what’s next on the list. Apparently my application was referred to the masters program. I have no idea what that means, though I sent an inquiring e-mail.

At least the whole ordeal has been a learning experience. Here’s what I’ve learned (and am learning).

- Never put all your eggs in one basket, even if the basket’s made of a springy material that protects eggs.
- Everything happens for a reason, so long as you make that reason happen.
- Be grateful for friends that you can call when something bad happens. Sometimes all you need to do is talk.
- Never try to find out the status of your application while all you’re college friends are in class.
- Never try to find out the status of your application while your old professor is out of her office.
- Getting what you want is like fighting a war: use every advantage you have to its maximum capacity (so long as you don’t violate the Geneva Conventions).
- Always remember that no matter how bad things seem to be, there’s always someone from high school you didn’t like that’s worse off than you.
- Be grateful if you learn these lessons while you’re still young so you have the opportunity to apply them and you don’t get totally screwed when you discover them.

Science Lesson

I was never really great at the hard sciences (especially biology), mostly because there’s too much to remember. Parts of the cell, organs, chemical names, rules for how they combine—it can get overwhelming very quickly.

But science’s growing complexity and fundamental role in economics (like genetic engineering) and politics (like the EPA) warrants everyone to learn some science terms to better sort through the issues. Here are two such words I found while reading Challenging Environmental Mythology, by Jack W. Dini.

The first is bioavailability, which describes the amount of a substance that’s available for interacting with other agents in the environment. Toxins might have a high bioavailability in the lab (thus making it very likely some amount will kill a given organism) while in nature that same amount of toxin could have a lower bioavailability for the same organism (thus making it less likely to kill it). Most evidence suggests that soil, for example, greatly lowers the bioavailability of chemicals.

The EPA doesn’t pay attention to bioavailability factors when it determines how harmful a substance is. The same goes for other studies done by scientists who are either ignorant of the phenomenon or have a vested interest in overestimating risk. It’s like citing experiments that drown people in water to conclude water is toxic. Bioavailability can vary dramatically (28.2% to 99% decline between six different soils) and diminishes with respect to DDT, DDE, DDD and dieldrin via earthworms.

The second term is chirality which describes the form of amino and nucleic acids. All such molecules can manifest as either “left-handed” or “right-handed,” even though they are comprised of the same atoms with the same quantities of each. Sometimes the “mirror image” is inactive. Other times, it can be dangerous. In 1957 thalidomide was used to lessen morning sickness, but its mirror image caused birth defects. Doses administered with both versions led to the false conclusion that the chemical itself was bad.

Mixed doses can be common (25% of all pesticides, for example, have mirror images), and the EPA doesn’t even acknowledge chirality as a factor. This is reflected in past environmental data which never distinguished which forms of the chemicals in question were present. A 1999 Nature report noted that traces of DDT derivatives, PCBs and plasticizers aren’t really as bad as once thought once you’ve adjusted for chirality.

I have to point out that if we didn’t politicized science and kept it in the private sector, these gaps wouldn’t be as bad because there’s a private sector incentive to recognize poor science and correct for it. Politics, however, isn’t about truth; it’s about perception. And that means never having to admit you were wrong.

Blame the Turks

Two years after we invaded Iraq we finally have an answer to help explain why our forces continue to meet with resistance to this day.

I thought that a major insurgency was inevitable—after all we’re messing with the internal affairs of a sovereign country, creating general chaos with no clear plan for rebuilding, and we’re not really well liked in the Arab world to begin with.

But apparently it didn’t have to be so major. Donald Rumsfeld announced yesterday that if Turkey let us invade via their border, then “a considerably smaller number of the Baathists and the regime elements would have escaped.”

There’s some logic to the argument: a lot of intelligence and military personal escaped to the north when the US invaded from Kuwait. But isn’t it likely that they did this because we weren’t invading from Turkey and if we did, they would have simply disappeared elsewhere. Iraq isn’t the largest country in the world but it’s still pretty big and the personal certainly knew it better than we did.

There’s simply no way Rumsfeld could know that the difference is “considerable” and it’s just another pathetic attempt of the administration to cover up the fact that they had virtually no post-war plan. When’s someone going to be held accountable for this screw up? Oh well. At least now we can be sure that the Turks hate us.

French Get Angry For Being Googled At

For years I’ve dreamed of the day when a major and well-known corporation with a funny name got into some controversy. That way, talking about it would be that much more enjoyable, the face of capitalism would be more playful, and I’d have a lot more fun writing headlines.

That day has finally come.

A French news agency is suing Google (note who did the ads for the article…that’s too funny) on grounds that it’s news service reproduces wire news stories without authorization. If you’ve never been to Google News, the page is basically a list of headlines gathered from papers all over the world and organized based on topics. All the information is taken from other websites (including the headline and summary).

The French’s case doesn’t work because the only way to get the full story is to click through to the page(s) Google got the words from. (The headline for the story snipet is always links to the original story of that headline and that snipet.) This is free advertising, so stop bitching.

Google officials also point out that the only way an article be included in Google News is if the company chooses to be indexed for Google News. Hmmm…

The best part about this story is that I found it via my Home Page: Google News.

Strangling Science

William M. Connolley is up for arbitration. So far, most of the wiki members are voting in favor of him, which is sad. WMC isn’t keeping up with the idea of mutual respect and compromise. (Most notably, he’s deleted my attempt to add the “disputed” label to the global warming article. He doesn’t even want people to know there are those who challenge conventional wisdom.)

The vote for it came from the user I only know as Cortonin, a scientist who’s much more middle of the road than I. Talk pages suggest he and WMC have been going back and forth for a while.

Mike thinks I should give this up (and I have taken a break from it), but so much about the article (and more importantly the edit wars of the article) have rubbed me the wrong way. It’s becoming to represent so much of what I dislike about today’s state of affairs.

Most notably is the sloppy science weaved in the article. In December of last year WMC demanded Cortonin to show him evidence of global cooling after he put up a similar dispute notice. WMC responded, “Again, I'm very familiar with both of those pages and they are perfectly compatible with this page, so (given your failure to find a model for cooling) I've removed the NPOV header.”

Models are not evidence, as WMC suggests. By definition they are based more on assumptions than observed data. It is items like this that make me think of the tag line on his blog: “Taking Science by the Throat…” Yes William, because you’re trying to kill it.

(Maybe I should stop keeping track of these articles. I have better things to do and talking to brick walls isn’t going to help me. Something to ponder.)

World of Contracts

Some weeks ago, a friend suggested I try the online game, World of Warcraft. I never played a game that required monthly fees before so he said I could just play on his account when he’s not using it. After I got into it, he said that when he hit the maximum level, he’d stop and sell me the game for about $50 (the price of the software).

This was not a problem for the majority of our arrangement. My friend took evening classes and played to the wee hours of the morning; I would play in the afternoons and while he was at class. He got it weekends (when I work).

Last week my friend decided his schedule was too screwed up and reset it, staying up for 31 hours straight. Instead of waking up at four or five (and go to class soon after), he was waking up at 11 or noon, about the time I do. Our schedules now severely overlapped.

I didn’t think much of it because he was only a couple of levels away from the max (level 60). I was even thinking about paying more than the fifty bucks for the game as he suggested he could sell the account on ebay for $100.

Everything changed a few days ago. In the kindest way possible, he said he was tired of sharing the account and because he’s starting a new character, he won’t be getting tired of the game anytime soon (Blizzard’s will also be offering hero classes to advanced levels soon).

So I now have to buy the game, set up an account and—worst of all—create a new character from the ground up (I was at level 36…the timer told me I’ve spent more than a total of nine straight days getting there.)

Reliable contracts are a key component of a functioning society, but how broadly should we define contract? Does it have to be written? If not, how formal does the verbal promise need to be? Could implied contracts count? On one hand, making it too casual obviously opens the door to abuse. On the other hand, de-formalizing contracts could help us get rid of those pesky lawyers.

So question becomes this: what—if anything—does my friend owe me for breaking contract?

All Hail Kirk

This makes me sad but it's a valuable lesson: fascism can don the most noble of masks.

Faces of Catan

Glen, you should appreciate this.

Alcatel—a French telecom company—is putting out a promotional version of a classic board game. The Communication of Catan is a high-tech take on the German original with a definite free market tone.

The best part: the robber dynamic from Settlers is now embodied by government regulation. How perfect is that?

Iowa Gets Video Cameras

Iowa’s known for many things: caucuses, corn, flooding, soybeans, pigs, an education system that used to be number one in the nation but has been declining for several years…corn, again.

We’re also known for being the future birthplace of Captain Kirk, specifically in the small town of Riverside (eight miles south of Iowa City). As Iowa’s most positive claim to fame, it’s about time they got their own show.

On March 29, Spike TV will launch their mini-series (“Invasion Iowa”) where William Shatner leads a cadre of Hollywood types to the Iowan hamlet so they can shoot a major motion picture. This would be the first time Shatner’s ever visited the town.

And what better way to start a relationship than with a lie? The movie’s a fake and the entire point of the series is to screw around with the small town and see how they react to the absurd changes justified by movie production. The last episode will air on April 1st (Whoa! It’s like they planned it that way!)

I love Spike TV, I love Star Trek, I love Joe Schmo (the series that inspired this one) and I really love it when national television covers my home state. Like everyone else in backwater country, I enjoy feeling recognized. Make some more shows about us, America, and I promise we’ll stop talking about ethanol and insisting we should be the first caucus for the presidency.

A Cleaner Harvard?

Don’t you just hate not having everything? Lots of people do and there’s basically three ways to respond.

The first is working hard and contributing something valuable to society, earning money to pay for lots of cool stuff.

The second is taking stuff from others and using it yourself. This always involves some kind of force so it’s particularly common in government.

The third is just encouraging less stuff across the board. That way, no one feels jealous. This is favored reasoning on college campuses, even when it concerns something colleges desperately need: cleaning.

Don Boudreaux at Café Hayek reported that Harvard students are complaining about Michael Kopko, a student selling maid services to dorm residents. An opinion piece in The Harvard Crimson claims,

By creating yet another differential between the haves and have-nots on campus, Dormaid threatens our student unity.... We urge the student body to boycott Dormaid [the name of Kopko’s company].

It goes on to argue that the service may create conflict between roommates (one wants it and the other doesn’t). Don rightly points out that this level of immaturity is hardly suiting for a college student.

Just for fun, let’s suppose the students have a point—inequality is bad because it makes people feel bad. By logical extension, all signs of different incomes should be eliminated. Nice cars (in fact, any cars) should be towed away. Televisions, microwaves, refrigerators, printers, game consoles, VCRs, DVD players and even computers that don’t belong to everyone should be removed from the dorms. All students should be limited to maximum standard of clothing and makeup. CDs, DVDs and newspapers should be stowed out of site. Decorating of any sort should be prohibitive (unless it’s with materials provided by the school). Food and dishes should similarly be taken away.

On the plus side, rooms won’t need cleaning anymore.

NOTE: Don used the words “chooses not buy” instead of “cannot afford” and inquired why he would do so. One reason is unless the service costs several thousand dollars, student can find ways to pay for it. For example, they could not buy some of their very expensive school books and instead photocopy and/or borrow them from others (I know students who do this). The nature of the case yields a second reason why any student could afford the service: they can do it themselves.

Shaking Up the Mouse Market

It’s amazing just how many problems the market can solve. I never even considered the impact of hand tremors on working a mouse. Thanks, IBM.

Movie Wars

If you’re like me you thought the last two Star Wars movies were nightmarish catastrophes. If they weren’t riding the coattails of the first three, we wouldn’t have a third one coming out in May and we probably wouldn’t have the second poison in the first place.

But it is a good universe to tell stories in and I would like see more of them. Have no fear my fellow hopefuls because in about a month, Panic Struck Productions will release a fan-created Star Wars movie called Revelations. (And the trailer looks pretty awesome.)

Until I learned about this project through Slashdot, I never knew fans made movies. I thought they limited themselves to stories and websites. But fan movies aren’t new and Lucas apparently loves to let them happen. As long as it’s non-profit, there’s no suing.

It got me thinking about copyright. What if the rules were less stringent and people could make money off the Star Wars universe? Yes people would be making money off of others’ hard work but the last trilogy ended more than 20 years ago; patents are usually expired after that. Why can’t people make a film if they only use material that’s two decades old?

I’m first to admit that it may make some really bad Star Wars movies but wake up everyone; we’re already there.

Climate Change Gets Nasty

Since contributing to Wiki’s articles on global warming and scientific opinion on climate change, I’ve had run-ins with some…savory characters in the wiki world. At the top of the list are William M. Connolley and Vsmith, both of whom are fans of reverting articles they don’t like.

Reverting is the option that basically changes any edit job to a previous version. Its use is to easily change vandalism. Some punk jumps onto an article and changes all the information to something completely false and you can quickly undo the damage.

Unfortunately, reverting is also a favored tactic of closed-minded people because it doesn’t even require you to consider what’s been added. A lot of people who don’t appreciate new ideas use it as if it was heroin. They often justify it by simply claiming it’s wrong, though the parts they delete are often others’ take on controversial topics.

For example, I added a political section to the “Scientific opinion on climate change.” It basically explained how politicized science can be hijacked by various groups and mutated into pseudo-science or even fraud. Given the politics of global warming and the fact that some people argue this is happening (most famously Michael Crichton and John Stossel), it seemed like the right thing to do.

Vsmith reverted the article, calling it “sensationalist” and “weasel-worded.” In the discussion section, he claimed it didn’t add anything new and attacked the analogy I used without offering any substantive explanation. He also called it mere conspiracy, which isn’t really accurate. (In the addition I said some people think it’s a conspiracy while other believe it’s more of a collective action problem.)

So I made some alterations (he had a few good points, like sometimes I was vague). I also added sources. In the edit heading I said “Made some requested changes, please discuss before reverting.” And hour and a half later Vsmith reverted anyway saying, “revert - don't need the political conspiracy theory.” In the discussion page, he attacked me because my main source was a novel (irrelevant for two reasons: it wasn’t my main source and the parts I used were fact). Connolley joined Vsmith, saying I should put the stuff in the article called “global warming controversy.”

This is a favored tactic of Connolley. He dumps ideas he doesn’t like and suggests people put them in different articles, assuming a front of neutrality. Thus it allows him to condense the opposing side to a mere link while he rambles on and on about his point of view, which also crowds out different opinions; Connolley also likes reverting on the basis the article is too large.

And he’s been hitting the revert button a lot on scientific opinion article. Here’s a little conversation Connolley had with a user called Cortonin after Cortonin tried to discuss the creation of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

Cortonin: RV to Marco Krohn version, includes description of IPCC formation. [RV is short for reverting.]
Connolley: Try alternaitve wording focussing on what they are rather then who chose them
Cortonin: Lets merge these two.
Connolley: No lets not
Cortonin: RV. Merging as compromise.
Connolley: Rv'ing Cortonins fake compromise
Cortonin: Then lets return to the more accurate one which comes from the reference, if you don't like the compromise version.
Connolley: Rv: your version is inaccurate. See talk.

The talk gets pretty nasty, mostly because Connolley doesn’t like the idea of including information about the politics of the IPCC and claims Cortonin is trying to discredit the organization. In Talk, Connolley says:

Well, you're finding the IPCC section quite controversial. Why not - since you really don't mind whether you do IPCC, or AMS, or whatever first - go on and do a less controversial one? But of course, thats laughable. We all know that in fact you care nothing for the others. And your version of the IPCC author seclection is wrong.

You know the funny this is that according to Wikipedia,

Sometimes, though, it is better to write a third version that takes the best bits of the other two, and combines them to get the best of both worlds. Note that reverts are not appropriate if a newer version is no better than the older version. You should save reverts for cases where the new version is actively worse. Regardless, we strongly recommend against heated revert wars.

Now if only some people would read it…

A Really Hopeful Future

Someday I’ll have it all. Someday I’ll have a computer that works reliably and will integrate with my palm pilot seamlessly (like it’s supposed to). Someday I’ll have a cell phone that gets reception in the places I go, a credit card in good enough shape to be swiped at the gas station so I don’t have to go inside and PDA that doesn’t erase its memory when it runs out of batteries. Someday all this technology will actually function while I’m holding it.

I’ve been away from LL&L that past few days because my computer has undergone a much needed overhaul including virus scans and reformatting. (I also visited Beloit in the middle of the week). After all that, I sat down to reinstall programs only to discover the left button doesn’t respond about 20% of the time. Today I grabbed a new mouse (though it cost more than I thought it would). Things seemed to be working until after the long installations needed for World of Warcraft: I couldn’t sign on. So I write this article instead.

I love technology, I really do. Entrepreneurship creates efficiency but innovation can only take you so far. Invention, however, makes our capacity for growth limitless which is why I want to dedicate my life studying technology’s role in the economy. I see it working every day though it never seems to function for me (at least not as well as for everyone else).

Someday it will all work. I swear.

"You Can’t Take the Sky From Me."

Damn you Mike, damn you for introducing me to Firefly. I now have the theme song constantly in my head.

For those of you out of the know, Firefly is a wonderful, short-lived series that was once on Fox a few years ago. Due to poor choice in scheduling and episode order, the network pulled the series halfway through its first season. It was later released on DVD.

That was when it's popularity really took off, so much so Universal bought the rights to make a movie (due out in September). It also generated a list of fan sites (here, here, here and here, to start), along with the required fan fic (here, here, and here). I especially like the site where the author is working on a virtual season of it for Phoenix Virtual Television (here) and the site dedicated to products inspired from the series (here). All this from a mere 14 episodes.

The lesson boys and girls is that in our age of technology and ethical greed, it's hard keeping a good product down. We also learned this lesson with Family Guy (Fox is bringing back the series thanks to high DVD sales). All things just keep getting better.

A Terminology of War

Last week I thought I’d enter the Wikicommunity and add what I (correctly) assumed would be a lacking but necessary voice to their article on global warming (I also updated my profile to link to LL&L).

There are a lot of fun and interesting stories that are spawning from this experience but one bears special mention: the attacks on my credibility.

For example after one of my edits, William M. Connolley—who watches the article like a hawk—visted the blog and attacked my intentions based on the March 4th post. Connolley is a fan of reverting the article (taking it back to an earlier version), undoing my work. Vsmith has accused me of “declaring war on wiki climate articles,” based off the post. Though I never used that term, it’s not an inaccurate description. I didn’t expect new ideas to be accepted and debated on these articles and unfortunately I’m right: skepticism is being met with hostility.

Thus others’ define this as a “war,” and I accept that term for two reasons. First, it takes two sides to make a peaceful exchange. If they are going to be nasty and closed-minded, then the term “discussion” is not appropriate (though I insist on taking the high ground). Second, the war anology lends itself to other useful analogies. For example, I opened a new front.

I’ve been spending time working the article and disscussion for wiki’s article called “Scientific opinion on climate change” and I’m trying to introduce a section on the politics that shape that very opinion. Again, lots of deletion and angry words.

NOTE: At the time of this writing I’ve been unable to contribute to the talk page to defend my take on the matter…something is wrong with the wiki site. Also, to view my (short lived) contributions, visit the history page and check out revisions by “Atlastawake.”

If anyone has any advice or links they could provide me to help make my cases, I’d love to see them.

The Economics of LL&L

Jackie, in an effort to boast traffic on her site (and for her own amusement) posted a series of controversial posts this week. It worked and she saw a 346% growth in comments and 45% increase in visits.

I’ve often mulled over if I should try a similar tactic to boast LL&L’s traffic but Jackie’s blog and mine fundamentally different; I doubt it will make much difference.

1. Jackie’s female and I’m not (nor am I pretending to be female). Thus it’s far less sexy (and claiming I blog naked holds a lot less power).

2. Jackie writes about her personal life while I don’t (at least not in a stand alone manner). Economically, this adds greater product differentiation to Jackie’s blog—issues vary but you can probably find similar commentary on others’ blogs as you can on mine. But Jackie’s blog is THE source for Jackie news (which is enriched by #1).

3. Jackie’s been around about a year longer than mine, allowing it more time to gather a larger audience.

4. Jackie’s picture is a lot better than mine.

5. Most of the people who are kind enough to visit LL&L are people I know and do it out of courtesy. Few of them bother to read my long posts (which is why I’m been trying to be more brief). Michelle, I’m looking at you.

6. This one is just a guess but I’m thinking Jackie writes like she’s writing for a blog while I write like I’m writing for a magazine. Her articles are more open ended (leaving more to comment about) while I try to preemptively counter some arguments. This, of course, makes my posts longer (like this one is becoming).

7. Lately World of Warcraft has been eating up assloads of my time, thus I’ve been blogging less. On the plus side I’m almost up to level 36!

And when I think about it, I don’t have that many taboo ideas to write about. The most controversial was probably DDD and nothing has ever come close (that I’ve written). I also don’t want to write about my personal life too much—I think it takes away from the title, of which I’ve already strayed from.

But I wouldn’t mind the low traffic so much if more of our readers would leave comments! Let me know you’re at least reading this damn thing—sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a wall (and you just can’t get insightful responses from a wall).

WikiClimate

I've started sharing my skeptical views of climate change using Wikipedia's article on global warming. I invite everyone to watch what will surely be mayhem and contribute to the article (I have a feeling it's going to need someone to help organize it because it's going to get messy over the next few weeks).

Sweat, Blood and Tears Shops

Tyler Cowen cites a story about Chinese workers who are striking for longer hours (because they want more money). Their hours were shortened by Nike and similar companies in response to criticisms of their sweat shops.

You’d think the people who claimed they were out for the interest of the world’s poor would ask the downtrodden what they want before changing their society.

Huben's Hubris

I’ve said many times that libertarianism’s greatest obstacle is the rhetoric war. Classical-liberalism holds a lot of great cards—overwhelming evidence, a consistent philosophy, an overarching respect for freedom and humanity—but we don’t have the one that outweighs them all: the rhetoric. Understanding how to take back the rhetoric requires us to learn the challenges to libertarianism.

I found this site by Mike Huben, a FAQ about classical-liberalism done by a critic of the philosophy. Some of it is interesting, some entertaining and some completely wrong. Most of it occurs in some combination of the three.

For example,

Many libertarian arguments are like fundamentalist arguments: they depend upon restricting your attention to a very narrow field so that you will not notice that they fail outside of that field. For example, fundamentalists like to restrict the argument to the bible. Libertarians like to restrict the argument to their notions of economics, justice, history, and rights and their misrepresentations of government and contracts.

Yes we all know that economics, justice, history, government, contracts and rights all sum up to a narrow scope. It totally leaves out pizza parties, backgammon and one-inch pieces of string.

Huben then proceeds to offer questions that are good ones to ask as a response to libertarian arguments so as to coax our “questionable assumptions…into view.” These are the order in which he presented them.

-Why should I accept that "right" as a given?
-Is that a fact around the world, not just in the US?
-Are there counter examples for that idea?
-Are libertarians serving their own class interest only?
-Is that economic argument complete, or are there other critical factors or strategies which have been omitted?
-When they make a historical argument, can we find current real-world counterexamples?
-If we adopt this libertarian policy, there will be benefits: but what will the disadvantages be?
-Are libertarians reinventing what we already have, only without safeguards?

These are good questions and exactly the kind that statists need to answer, not just ask. Over the next few days (or weeks, depending on how inspired I am) I’ll answer these questions for Mr. Huben, and I hope our tens of readers will help out, too.

Temporal Disturbance in the Blogosphere

At precisely 10:46 Central Standard Time, I visited flying hedgehogs. I saw a post written by Nikki who lives in Arlington (in the Eastern Time zone). Therefore, the time of the posting could not have been after 11:46. But the post is filed under March 2, 2005, not March 1, 2005.

Nikki, when did you learn time travel?

Internet Exploiter?

Who says Microsoft is a monopoly? Two independent reports discovered that the company’s Internet Explorer browser's market share dropped below 90% as people make the transition to open source browsers like Firefox.

Virtually all accounts justify the move that IE is inferior to so many others: it’s riddled with flaws, poor at blocking pop-ups and lacks enough security. So why is the share still so high? Critics of Microsoft sneer it’s because IE is written into Windows and you can’t delete it. But since Microsoft doesn’t make anyone use it, the complainant reduces to the fact that IE is a giveaway.

Again we ask why IE is so heavily used. It’s ultimately due to three issues: knowledge, trust and costs. Most people don’t know much about computers, thus they don’t know how good things can be and they don’t bother to look for them. Even if they find an alternative, there’s little guarantee the browser is better and virus-free. Microsoft may not be perfect but few believe its products will wipe hard drives. But by now Firefox is well enough known and trusted, these barriers become less significant (though most people don’t know how much better the alternatives can be, so knowledge is still an issue). But there are significant costs to a new browser, even if it’s free.

I’m using IE now and I’m looking to switch, but I’m also dreading it. I’m used to IE’s organization and want to avoid all adapting to a new one. I have scores of sites bookmarked and they’re organized in just the way I like it. I don’t want to bookmark all over again. And all of those little things—getting used to clicking a new icon, being comfortable with a new look, learning to ignore all the minute details I may not like—encourage me to put off the transition.

Most people just want to get online. I-Mac’s success demonstrated that. Plug it in, click the icon and start searching for porn. IE’s success isn’t due to force or monopolization, its laziness. But it looks like that’s slowly changing.