Talking to kids about race

(peekaboo)

The recent bullshit brouhahas about race ("Is Santa Clause white?") have gotten me thinking about how to explain it to kids. I'm sick of words like "black" and "white" being treated as meaningful categories, when they are just the remnants of an system of exploitation.

I found several websites providing advice on how to speak to kids about racism, and describing scenarios about how the discussion might come up:

parenting.com
katie couric
civilrights.org
Hand-in-hand parenting

One thing I will not do is tell my kids that "we're all the same on the inside". I find that idea to be demeaning; we are different, and it is our differences that make society work by allowing us to complement each other's strengths and reducing the competition that occurs when we all seek the same thing.

I'm hoping I'm lucky enough to get a straight-forward question from my kids, like "Joe says he's white, what does that mean?"

My answer might go something like this...

"Long ago, a group of greedy people wanted to steal from other people. They labeled their victims "black" because of how they looked and called everyone who looked like themselves "white". They said that it was okay for whites to steal from blacks. These greedy people were in charge for a long time, so they convinced everyone else to use labels like "black" and "white". They aren't in charge anymore, but people still use those labels because they've gotten used to the labels. Now those words are just a quick way to describe how a person looks, but they are sloppy words and you should be more detailed when describing what a person looks like."

The Freedom vs. Security vs. Profit tradeoff

People often parrot the "freedom vs. security" as though this were a self-evident dichotomy. Leaving aside the fact that a slave has no security, the most glaring omission here is that security can often be attained through just putting a little effort into it. However, at the end of the day, someone doesn't want to absorb the costs of securing their facilities, so they turn to the state to assure security through strategies that impose on everyone else. All too often, this "someone" is some corporation whose bosses are just looking for a way to funnel billions of extra dollars to a bunch of people who already have more money than they could ever spend. This is how the ruling class works.

goodbye cruel blogosphere

I know I've said it before, but real life beckons, and I must go. I'm serious this time; I think that things will just get more intense for the next decade or so. I'll come back some day, when the family and the job aren't so demanding of my attention. It's been fun. I've learned a lot from you all.

See you on the other side...

Prissy old-money: the WSJ editorial board

This video-editorial from the WSJ is absurd. The woman who complains about NYC's new bike sharing program is the perfect stereotype of the prissy old-money matriarch. I'm no fan of Bloomberg, but I'm glad he's pissing off entitled bigots like this woman:


tip to In Media Res.

The "moral" vs "rational" basis of political authority

A few weeks ago, I blogged about my interest in Michael Heumer's new book The Problems of Political Authority. A comment from rulingclass emphasized the difference between the "moral" arguments for political authority and the "rational" arguments, noting that a rationalist argument will be seen as irrelevant to those who focus on the moral basis of political authority. I am not sure exactly what Heumer's arguments focus on -- the book is now sitting on my nightstand, awaiting my attention (and competing with Gulag: a history as my next read).

Before reading the book, I wanted to get a better sense of the distinction that rulingclass made. In his comment, rulingclass equated "moral" with "communitarian" and "rational" with "liberal". He followed by asserting that most people/Americans are communitarian rather than liberal, so the "rationalist" arguments (often favored by liberal academic philosophers) are not persuasive in public discourse.

I'm going to rephrase these comments in my own words (and connect them to the work of others), hoping that rulingclass, will tell me if I'm interpreting him correctly. I consider "moral" arguments for political authority to be those asserting that submission to authority is intrinsically good, whereas the "rationalist" arguments emphasize how submission to authority enables us to achieve pre-existing goals. Having that interpretation, I came across an essay "Man the Political Animal", in which the author (Michael Hannon) argued that political community is an intrinsic good rather than an instrumental good. I think this is the same distinction being made by rulingclass, but I like these terms better than "moral" and "rational", so I will use them for the rest of this post.

When rulingclass first mentioned that most Americans have a "moral" view of political authority, I contemplated exactly how that would manifest. I figured that for conservatives, the authority would essentially be patriarchal in nature -- that we obey the state for the same reason we obey our parents/father; while for progressives, this would be the authority of the community. However, Hannon's essay (in a conservative publication) focuses on the authority of the community, not parents. Of course, in a republic (unlike a monarchy), state authority cannot really be conceived as a manifestation of patriarchy. Conservative American patriarchy is limited to the family, and the authority structure binding households is more egalitarian. This authority can be idealized as arising from a union of heads-of-households who coordinate their actions to establish more effective governance over the other members of their respective households.  This ideal could account for Lackoff's "strict father" perception of governance. I'm not sure how one can philosophically arrive at the "nurturant parent" perception of government that Lackoff attributes to the American center-left, but it clearly depicts political authority as an extension of an intimate and instinctual authority relationship, not some sort of contract or engineered relationship.

I am put into a bit of a bind by the acknowledgement that most Americans are communitarian and see political authority as an intrinsic good. For as long as I can remember, I have viewed politics as a problem of coordinating individuals for their mutual good. When people use moralist assertions to justify policy (e.g. drugs must be prohibited because their use is wrong), I clench my teeth and disengage from discussion with them -- I basically write them off as dangerous fanatics. The problem is that most people think like this, even if they are not as adamant in their opinion. So how to discuss politics with these people?

One approach is to target the authoritarianism in culture, whether by developing non-authoritarian methods of child-rearing and education, or attacking authoritarian institutions and ideologies that are not blatantly political. This sometimes conflicts with the political libertarian impulse to target political authority in isolation and profess that personal beliefs and voluntary institutions are separate from the political movement (I suppose this is rehashing the thick/thin debate).

The other approach is to dissect political authority and demonstrate that it is incompatible with their primary moral goals. For instance, during the Cato Unbound discussion of Anthony de Jasay's ideas (which I've only skimmed), one of the authors responds that "[The welfare state] reigns supreme because in the eyes of most citizens it conforms to the egalitarian fairness norms that have evolved with humans.” When the standard attitude is that state policies should "try" to achieve fairness norms, the proper libertarian response is to argue that the state is antithetical to such norms (in contrast to the elitist response that often masquerades as libertarian). Here we see how the "instrumental" view of political authority often has a strong moral component; when a state policy or power is not being justified on the grounds that it promotes fairness, it is being justified as a way to prevent free-riding. If we show that the state creates a free-rider problem (i.e. rent-seeking) and facilitates exploitation of the poor, then we have an argument that turns the intrinsic good of political authority against other fundamental values that people may give priority to. Through it all, I think the problem is that most people view the state as an extension of "us", rather than as an exploitative "them". The trick is to retain a notion of "us" (allowing for secession) while rejecting authority relationships that can be corrupted by "them".

Do secrets make you stupid?

Here's an interesting thought from Daniel Ellsberg on how having access to top-secret information affects a person's thinking. To sum it up, it becomes impossible to really listen to (and learn from) anyone who lacks access to the same information, and such "fools" become nothing more than objects to be manipulated. Great.

Tip: Good discussion at BHL on Obama.

No rule of law: when everyone has committed a crime

I am very dissapointed by Carnegie Mellon's response to the brouhaha over the "half-naked pope" costume worn by one of their art students in a parade. The student has been charged by the campus cops with indecent exposure. The authorities claim that this is simply a matter of violating a local ordinance, and not about the subject of this woman's performance. For good measure, they also charged a man who got naked as part of a non-political performance in the same parade.

My strong suspicion is that this is a political prosecution, orchestrated by the school's administration in order to placate a bunch of conservative rabble-rousers. There's also the fact that the Catholic Church has a lot of influence in Pittsburgh; some of this influence comes from their ownership of a lot of land in CMU's neighborhood, which gives them influence over local zoning ordinances and would allow them to refuse to sell said land that CMU might want for future expansion.

There are two lines of evidence for my suspicion that this is not simple law-enforcement. First, it seemed to take a long time for the police to charge this woman. I'm sure that cops were present during this parade, and they could have issued her a warning or citation on-the-spot. The fact that they did not immediately issue a warning suggests that nudity is tolerated under these circumstances. 

My second line of evidence that this is a political prosecution comes from various reports that nudity has traditionally been tolerated (if not encouraged) at these parades. I read this claim in the comments section of an article posted at the website of the CMU student newspaper, the Tartan when this all started. I followed up by looking at the official promotional material for this parade. Notably, the pictures from the 2013 parade have been removed from Flickr. However, the 2012 parade pics are still available. They make it clear that the parade is typically pretty raunchy (facebook shows a subset of the more tame photos). There are even a couple of pictures showing exposed buttocks (and ass crack), which falls foul of most indecency ordinances that I've looked at. For the sake of documentation, I'm going to repost the picture here, though I must warn you that it isn't pretty (original):

To top it off, the School's Facebook account even promoted the event by saying "last year got a little out of hand... we expect nothing less this time around." When your combine that attitude with the student's report that she was encouraged to be politically provocative, I arrive at the sad conclusion that she is being scapegoated as part of a conflict between the Arts faculty's impulse to be provocative, and the university administration's impulse to constantly expand the influence of the institution. This has made a mockery of the law, and once again shown how arbitrary law-enforcement can be... to the point that there is no law, just power plays.

The only good thing about this is a sort of Streisand effect -- where the Church has brought attention to it's efforts to silence dissent and caused me to question whether "sacred" is a bad word, and CMU has exposed it's politicization. This may even stoke a bit of a "free speech movement" on a campus that is historically apolitical and has a high rating from FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education).

Some other thoughts:
Boy @ the window

Is nothing sacred?

The Catholic bishop of Pittsburgh recently insisted that everyone should respect sacred symbols (e.g. the cross). My response: really?

I feel like this is an issue that philosophers should have bickered over for a few centuries by now, so I'm disappointed that I cannot easily find a summary of the arguments against sacred symbols. I recall the essay "against moralism", but it's not addressing this exact point. There are also plenty of arguments against nationalism, which is just one context for sacred symbols. Who has made the general argument against sacred symbols?

The best I could find was an essay called "Is nothing Sacred" attributed to Salman Rushdie, in which he defends the value of the novel. There is one paragraph that gets to the point:

No, nothing is sacred in and of itself.... Ideas, texts, even people can be made sacred - the word is from the Latin sacrare, "to set apart as holy" - but even though such entities, once their sacredness is established, seek to proclaim and to preserve their own absoluteness, their inviolability, the act of making sacred is in truth an event in history. It is the product of the many and complex pressures of the time in which the act occurs. And events in history must always be subject to questioning, deconstruction, even to declarations of their obsolescence. To revere the sacred unquestioningly is to be paralyzed by it. The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas Uncertainty, Progress, Change - into crimes.

That's a good start. Of course, it's detached from the arguments for sacredness, so it has limited value. But it's enough to demonstrate that respect for the sacred is not a self-evident good.

The Catholic Church is a political organization

There's been a bit of a fuss in Pittsburgh over a public art performance in which a CMU student dressed up as the pope and handed out condoms -- while showing off her cross-shaped pubic hair. It took a couple of days, but eventually someone complained: first the local bishop, and then a bunch of rabble-rouses across the nation (such as the "Catholic League").

The bishop seems to be the most articulate and reasonable among these complainers. He apparently is primarily concerned with the use of the cross in this demonstration, and with an increasing disregard for "the sacred". My inclination is to respond "fuck the sacred". In my experience, "the sacred" is a ploy that some people use to impose themselves on others, and I am quite happy to say that either everything is sacred, or nothing is. (These opinions have not received extensive thought, so I'd love to discuss them). Furthermore, if a powerful person uses a sacred symbol to reinforce his authority, then he is the one who politicized it and invited sacrilege.

The more obnoxious complaints are of the "victimized American Christian" variety... as if American Christians are an oppressed class. Catholics may have some claim to special consideration in America, since they were historically marginalized (particularly if they migrated from English-occupied Ireland), but as a group, Catholics have made a pretty solid transition into the establishment. For instance, they are over-represented in Congress (31%), and it's been about 50 years since the USA had it's first Catholic President. Given this influence, I'm don't give serious attention to superficial claims that Catholics are being treated unfairly. That's not to say that Catholics aren't subject to hate crimes (like every other group), but only that there is no reason to assume that any mockery of Catholicism represents anti-Catholic bigotry and likewise that our society doesn't need organizations that are specifically dedicated to protecting them (such as the "anti-defamation" Catholic League, which was founded after Kennedy's presidency).

So anyway, as is common for American Christians who deny their privilege, these offended Catholics are claiming that a major university (i.e. liberals) would not tolerate mockery of other religious figures. My first counter-example would be the Iranian Ayatollah's, and I'd follow up with the King/Queen of England (head of the Anglican church), Pat Robertson, and the generic character of a revival tent-preacher or faith-healer. Granted, most of these are Christians, but there's a good reason for that -- only Christian religious leaders have substantial influence in our society. My remaining counter-example is a political leader, but so is the Pope.

The Pope is not only is influential, but he heads an explicitly political organization. As such, he is fair game for criticism and mockery. While all religious institutions have political impact, this passive political influence is not enough for the Catholic Church. Rather than just teaching that "abortion is evil" and then allowing laymen to take up the political battles, Church leaders insist on getting directly involved with organization of political campaigns and lobbying of politicians. For instance, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops takes positions on state policies that are not directly relevant to the church (e.g. access to emergency contraceptives), and many bishops use their religious authority to pressure state officials to change public policy (e.g. by denying communion to supporters of abortion rights).

While the political activities of the Catholic Church in the USA are not very intense, the church can  be downright oppressive in countries where it is dominant. The pressure that they expert on legislators is much more intense in parts of Latin America, both because exclusion from the Church has a much greater impact and because the Church strives to influence a wider range of topics. Furthermore, there are several countries where the Catholic Church receives special privileges and powers (such as subsidies in many countries).

All in all, the Pope is a political leader, therefore he has opened himself up to a range of attacks that would normally be considered inappropriate if targeted at catholic laymen or a low-key religious leader.

tip

Ripple and RipplePay: same thing?

The Economist just published a story about the expanding influence of bitcoin, in which it mentioned Ripple, a new open-currency system. This reminded me of Ripple Pay (which I was very excited about in 2006), but I cannot figure out if it is actually the same system. The Ripple Pay websites are offline, and the Wikipedia article only mentions the name of a single developer, who does not seem to be involved in the new service, Ripple. Also, the logo is different for the two companies.

Still, the new Ripple does seem to include an IOU system, which was the core of Ripple Pay. Does anyone know more?

Books: The Problem of Political Authority

I'm looking forward to reading this book: The Problem of Political Authority, An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey by Michael Heumer ($36, paperback). Excerpts can be found on Heumer's website.

A strong recommendation from John Danaher (Philosophical Disquisitions) is enough to convince me to drop a few bucks on this.

Needless to say, I think that the problem of political authority is the fundamental issue in political philosophy, and I was sorely disappointed by how it was dismissed as an issue in the political philosophy survey course that I took in college. Even those who support political authority should grapple with this issue, because the nature of political authority has profound consequences for determining the appropriate use of political authority (which seems to be what political philosophers care about).

While we're on this topic, I want to reiterate my recommendation of Common Sense, as a beautiful example of how to demolish the perception of political authority ($0, online). 

For completeness, here is related content that I noticed:

• Cato Unbound debate featuring Heumer.
• Goodreads reviews
• Bryan Caplan review ; Caplan "criticism"
• Samizdata review.
• Strike-the-root review (inaccessible right now)

Anti-government derivation of Rawlsian justice

The other day, I got into a Facebook argument over the fairness of a progressive income tax and means-testing of the retirement income assurance system (e.g. Social Security and IRAs). When faced with the assertion that it is unfair to discriminate against relatively wealthy citizens, I responded that true impartiality is impossible given that the state does anything, and therefore the closest thing to fairness is to provide income support to the least well-off members of society.

This is essentially Rawls' "maximin" criterion. As I superficially understand it, Rawls took this as an a priori principle of fairness, and used it as justification for extensive state intervention in a fundamentally free-market (liberal) economy. I want to look at it from the perspective where the state has already intervened in the economy, and we use the maximin principle as a way to minimize the unfairness of the outcome. This is similar to Kevin Carson's maxim that the state "breaks our legs and then gives us crutches", and that we must keep the crutches until our legs have healed. For the sincere statist, this can be seen as a principle of fairness; but for the ruling class managers, it can be seen as a social engineering paradigm to minimize the number of individuals who are willing to rebel despite exploitation.

I start with the premise that every state action produces winners and losers. This is true even if most state actions are positive-sum interventions. To neo-liberal economists, positive-sum interventions should be pursued whenever possible without consideration of fairness, because some of the excess produce can (ideally) be redistributed to the losers to achieve Pareto efficiency. The problem is that it's impossible to identify the winners and losers of each action. Given a large population and a large number of interventions, there will be some people who have repeatedly been on the losing end of these interventions, to the point that their ability to make a living (or save for retirement) has been crippled. Abandoning these people to poverty would be a great injustice.

In this context, we can only observe and manipulate the outcomes. Some people will have done very well for themselves -- through a mixture of effort, benefiting from state policies, and luck (i.e. everything else) -- while others will have done poorly. If we were to select the people who have the least success at life, we would probably also be selecting the people who have been harmed the most by state policies, along with those who exerted the least effort and were otherwise the most unlucky. As such, the provision of an economic safety net can be a strategy for mitigating the cumulative unfairness of those who lose out due to numerous state policies. To take it further, if we're asking the state to compel citizens to provide public goods, then we've already accepted the premise that "we're all in this together", and an economic safety net is justified as a way to mitigate bad luck (which is more in line with the Rawlsian idea).

A typical conservative rejection to the above argument may be that very few (if any) people have been impoverished by the policies that have allowed others to become wealthy, and that differences in effort account for the vast majority of the differences in economic success. For instance, they may say that tax rates on poor people are low, so that even if someone doesn't benefit from state spending, they still have not been crippled by it. Likewise, they may assert that the per-person economic costs of interventions like copyright are minimal, either because they believe that culture would collapse in the absence of copyright or because they believe copyrighted items are essentially frivolous luxuries. While I would point to mass-incarceration for victimless crimes as an example of how state policies "for the greater good" can impoverish some individuals, conservatives would likely assert that the criminal activity (e.g. illegal drug use) was bound to leave the prisoner destitute anyway, or that the criminalization of this activity was only a minor imposition on the criminal, and that their poverty is due to their choice to disobey legitimate authority. Many of the other policies that increase living expenses and depress incomes are so complicated that tracing cause and effect is nearly impossible. Suffice to say, I think that they are sufficient to impoverish many people, through the cumulative effect of many small burdens.

To solidify this viewpoint, I turn to a theory of the exploitative state. The first component of this theory is that while some state actions are positive-sum, many are zero-sum or even negative-sum. The reason that such outcomes are common is that political power is unevenly distributed among the population, and the determinant of state action is that it benefits the powerful -- not that it benefits the population as a whole.

This imbalance of power has a consequence that is even more important than the existence of negative-sum outcomes -- it biases the outcomes such that some people (the powerful) systematically win, while others systematically lose. This scenario does not even require that the powerful consciously exploit the powerless, only that they obstruct any policy that hurts them and promote policies that help themselves (regardless of their impact on the powerless). In this environment, the gains and losses of government action pile up and account for a substantial amount of the wealth variation in the population.

Given this systematic transfer of wealth from the powerless to the powerful (and the consequent construction of both a wealthy and an impoverished class), a person concerned with fairness should not be too bothered by policies that appear to exploit the rich. While an excessively populist attitude can be leveraged by the agents of the state to stuff their own pockets and intimidate critics, adding a clearly defined progressive component to a tax system does not facilitate such shake-downs. By shifting the tax burden from the poor to the rich, we can mitigate the systematic unfairness of government actions. It's only a superficial solution, but it definitely is not the problem.

Did Macklemore & Lewis sell out to the NBA?

You may have heard of this hip-hop duo, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. They are all "anti-consumerist" and shit, but they just made a promo for the NBA with their song "Wings". This has lead to accusations of selling out, with them  responding that it is all part of their grand strategy to bring their message to the masses. I'm not going to criticize their professed strategy, but I couldn't let stand their assertion that the NBA is tangential to the problematic thinking that is targeted in the song.

Basically, they say that the song is about the idea that you are defined by what you wear, and therefore their beef is with Nike but not the NBA. They excuse the NBA on the grounds that it is just an industry that exists within the capitalist/consumerist system. However, the reality is that the NBA (and pro-sports in general) are the epitome of the consumerist pathology. At the one extreme are companies that provide us with simple commodities that provide a simple utility; at the other extreme are the brands that manipulate our perception of society in order to convince us that we have to give them money in order to be accepted. This is just sick, and it is all pervasive in sports fandom.

At some level, the sports leagues are selling us entertainment -- the spectacle of high-performance athletic competition. But as with the Air Nike, the product is only part of what they are selling. In fact, sports may be the industry that sells us the least real product and the most image. We watch sports because our friends are doing so. We wear logos to show solidarity with our neighbors. Our emotions are ridiculously affected by the outcome of the games (and it's not simply a matter of whether the playoffs will include the team whose performance we appreciate most). Pro sport leagues have managed to tap into our primal social impulses, and claim them as their own property.

They have stolen our own society from us. They are making us pay just to participate in our own community. Other industries do similar things (e.g. the music industry and software firms such as Facebook and Microsoft), but pro sports is particularly gratuitous about it.

To top it off, they have special anti-trust exemptions from the Federal Government. What a bunch of pigs.

The product of America's mass-incarceration policy: racist gangs

The Aryan Brotherhood; the Mexican Mafia; the Black Guerrilla Family.

All three of these gangs originated in American prisons and gained influence by providing protection for inmates in the context of the state-imposed war of all-against-all that occurs within the prison.

Lessig sees the corruption of the system; gives rousing speech. Nothing follows.

Lessig comes so close to seeing that the democratic legitimacy of the Republic is a sham. As a big-shot talking to a bunch of other big-shots, it's understandable that he would think that the system is ultimately responsive to the people.

"Fixing the problem" is not impossible, but his strategy is a non-starter. A broken system cannot fix itself. The law-making process cannot be fixed by passing a law.

He's trying to be radical, but he stops short. His analysis is superficial -- the thinks that the problem is in how money is obtained, but he doesn't ask why money is necessary. He doesn't answer this question, and therefore he doesn't realize how detached regular people are from the rule making process. He doesn't realize that the system is elitist (and "corrupt") at its core.

FD: Politicization of Climate Sciences

originally published at Freedom Democrats; 12 Dec 2009

In the wake of Climategate, climate researcher Mike Hulme has articulated the ideal role of science in public discourse. Basically, he declares that scientific debates should be kept separate from ethical debates (leaving aside bias inherent in hypothesis generation and choice of research directions), while still informing our actions. This is a nice ideal, but ignores the fact that people will enter scientific debates with ulterior motives and it can be hard for the layman to distinguish between the sincere scientist and these charlatans.
In contrast to Mike Hulme's call for the separation of science and politics, we have his colleague James Hansen (head of NASA's Goddard) who is quite happy to transform his scientific prestige into a platform for political moralizing. In reviewing Hansen's new book for DailyKos, DarkSyde introduces him in this manner:

To be a top climate scientist today means being up to speed in graduate level physics, advanced mathematics, planetary astronomy, meteorology, paleontology, oceanography, bio and geo-chemistry, dealing with programmers and constantly shifting computer architectures, and now on top of everything else, you have to be a tireless political activist and media celebrity.(emphasis mine)

No, you don't have to be a political activist...at least not in Hulme's model of science and politics. The scientific method strives for consensus, while the political method strives for domination; If Hansen and DarkSyde want to make politicians out of scientists, then they should expect politicized resistance and deal with it as a political dispute.
When Hansen compares carbon emission credits to the Indulgences that sparked the reformation, he just sounds like a moralizing fool (even to someone like me who agrees with his preference for a carbon tax, in this case).
There is no necessary connection between doing research and political advocacy. A scientist does have a responsibility to communicate his findings to the public, and when his findings have urgent implications, there is not time to allow the knowledge to percolate through the formal education system (i.e. inform other researchers, who inform their students at university, who become teachers in the primary and secondary schools). So there is an imperative for some member of the field to directly communicate the field's findings to the general public, which probably means being "a media celebrity". However, this is an issue for all academic disciplines, and it is not a requirement for everyone in the field--certain individuals naturally distinguish themselves within the field as communicators and politicians (often taking jobs such as heading major research institutions), and these individuals are the natural public spokespersons of the field.
But what if the research findings have implications for economic policy? If the spokesperson ignored those implications, they would be neglectful in their communication to the public, but taking a position politicizes the field of study.  Following Hulme's model, I suggest that that the scientist make a point of contacting political activists, informing them of the situation, and allowing them to advocate for policy changes. This may even include sitting down with them for a public Q&A, where the scientist acts as a resource on which they draw as they suggest policy responses. This could be either a live discussion, or a book where the first chapter describes the scientific situation and the subsequent chapters are written by activists/politicians who explore the implications.
I'm not saying that scientists should avoid politics all together, just that they shouldn't use their prestige as a practicing scientist to gain exceptional authority in their political advocacy (at least until they have retired).

FD: Climategate

originally published at Freedom Democrats 11/25/2009

By now, i'm sure everyone is aware that the CRU at University of East Anglia was hacked recently either from the outside, or as inside job, and roughly 160 megabytes of documents and emails were archived and uploaded to a Russian file server(btw, russian server farms are a hackers' choice spot for storing warez and other booty). Since then, the document archive has been widely disseminated over the internet, and after the story hit Drudge, it has become fodder for the blogosphere. Predictably, the reactions have reinforced the tribalistic group polarization over this issue. I reviewed some of email correspondence, and unless someone has a firm grasp of climate science, it's virtually impossible if tell if there is any conspiracy to fudge the data. So, i suppose each side will refer to their own priests to tell them what they want to hear. However, it is fairly apparent from the email correspondence that there are some public choice games being played, which frankly, is hardly surprising; that's to be expected from any scientific research that is primarily being funded by the government and which has political ramifications. The only really troubling aspect of the email correspondence is the apparent conspiracy among a few prominent scientists at the CRU to use their political standing and influence to bully refereed journals not to publish papers contrary to "consensus research." This is a very putrid form of public choice, in that group A, which has significant standing with a government body(IPCC) and receives public funding, uses that power to threaten to boycott any refereed journal that publishes research research contrary to the consensus opinion of Group A, or if Group A uses that power to actively conspire to fix the referees.

In the end, Climategate probably doesn't necessarily say much about the reliability of climate science, but it certainly does reinforce the perception among many of an intolerant orthodoxy that that has built up around AGW. The term usually thrown around is "denier," with the connotation being the equating of "AGW consensus" skepticism with something like young earth creationism. I define such skepticism not to imply that there is no such thing as anthropogenic influence on climate(e.g, just nuke the amazon rain forests and we could witness first hand the possible anthropogenic influences on climate, as an extreme example to make a point), but rather with respect to the notion that climate scientists can model the impact of human collective action(or lack thereof) on future long-term climate changes. Admittedly, I don't know much about climate science per se, but I do know a little about non-linear dynamical systems. I'm sure everyone is familiar with the concept of "butterfly effect" in chaos theory, meaning that small variations in initial conditions of a non-linear dynamical system can result in wildly different evolutions in such dynamical systems over time. This is why you can predict weather only over a short term. Climate modeling, where climate is the long-term average of weather over time, however relies on boundary condition, numerical fluid dynamic modeling of the ocean and atmosphere to predict future climate, wherein current observable boundary conditions can be more or less plugged in to test the reliability of the model in explaining past and current climate. These models may be useful in understanding current climate, but it doesn't mean they will accurately predict future changes in climate by fiddling with the boundary conditions. It's a similar, analogous concept, I suppose, to a best fit curve to graph data points in an experiment, which of course, can involve fiddling and fudging, but how well will that best fit curve fit future data points? And in the real long term, that is paleo-climate, it doesn't matter what the fuck humans do, the earth is going to enter into another ice age.

One thing for sure, there should be plenty of skepticism about the public choice dynamics of any collective action. The two things that primarily aggravate me about the typical political debate is the contention that we have only *T* amount of time to act before it's too late, that we have to immanently act to pass whatever boondoggle before time *T* or else all is lost and irreversible. That's scientific nonsense and fear-mongering. The other thing is the propaganda that a public choice game of subsidized green technology is going to be an economic boom. No it's not. There is another type of "denial" at work here, namely "government failure deniers."

FD: The risk of climate change, and its implications

originally published at Freedom Democrats, 12/19/2007

When dealing with an issue like greenhouse gas-induced climate change, productive discussion needs to stay focused on the practical questions: what is the general nature of the risk, and how can we mitigate the risk. Discussions of climate change often become sidetracked by non-productive investigations into the detailed nature of the risk, which are often initiated by individuals who are afraid that general recognition of risk implies that particular strategies/policies must be adopted. I hope to keep this discussion on track by starting with these two declarations:

 1. We don't know exactly how the climate will respond to our greenhouse gas emissions, and it doesn't really matter.
 2. There are many different strategies available to us.

Before getting into the details, let's consider the nature of risk and uncertainty with respect to climate change. We don't know what our climate will be like in the future. It might be similar to today's, or it might be worse. We often wish to refrain from developing plans/opinions until we have a clear sense of what to expect in the future, but this prudence becomes paralytic in situations where we will never have high confidence in our predictions. Some degree of uncertainty is unavoidable with any prediction, and this is especially true with climate predictions due to the complexity of the system. Just to become an expert on this topic would require about 10 years of full time study, and even the experts don't know what will happen. Obviously, most of us cannot become experts, yet we still need to decide how we will act. So, let us begin:

*Greenhouse gas emissions (GGEs) create a substantial risk of problematic climate change.*

1. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas: it allows visible light to pass , but prevents the passage of infra-red light. The net effect is that energy from the sun can easily reach the surface of the earth, but it is hindered from leaving the earth.

2. Humans are drastically increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (about 25% since 1900).

By themselves, these facts give us reason to consider how to reduce GGEs. But we still may wonder if these changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels can impact atmospheric temperatures. So we look at fact 3:

3. Atmospheric temperature is strongly correlated with carbon dioxide concentrations. This has been seen over the long term (ice cores ) and over the short term (modern monitoring).

3b. We also know that the size of glaciers is inversely correlated with atmospheric carbon dioxide, both over the long term and the short term.

This doesn't prove that carbon dioxide levels cause an increase in atmospheric temperature or glacier-melt, but the data is consistent with that proposal. Warming may have all types of side-effects, while excessive glacier-melt will impact the entire water system of the earth, ranging from glacier-fed rivers to the ocean itself. As a practical matter, we face a substantial risk that carbon dioxide emissions will cause global warming and climate change. If these facts aren't enough to convince you that we face a risk of GGE-induced climate change, here's one last fact:

4. The experts agree that we face a risk of GGE-induced climate change.

The Earth is warming. Glaciers are melting. It's time to admit that there is a risk of GGE-induced climate change, and figure out what we want to do about it:

*We have many options for dealing with the risk of GGE-induced climate change.*

 1. Reduce GGEs. This is the intuitive response, and has recieved the most attention over the past couple of decades, meaning that we have developed plenty of ideas of how to reduce GGEs. These options include personal, institutional, and governmental reforms. They exhibit a wide range of return on investment, as illustrated by abatement curves . These options include development of low-emission infrastructe (buildings, vehicles, cities), low-emission technologies, low-emission lifestyles, and carbon sequestration. These may be promoted by private initiative or governmental policies including subsidies, mandates, spending decisions, taxes, cap-n-trade, etc. The most drastic measures (immediate elimination of fossil fuels) could be as bad as global warming.
 2. Buffer the change on a global level (i.e. Geo-engineering , such as putting sulfur dioxide in the upper atmosphere)
 3. Do nothing/Deal with the symptoms directly: We may decide that other concerns are more pressing, and that the risk of climate change does not justify the expenditures needed to stop it. We may also find that we "can't put the geenie back into the bottle", since we've already changed atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. We may also find that it is easier to deal with the symptoms (both technically and politically) than it is to deal with the cause of climate change.

Personally, I favor a mix of options 1 and 3. Reductions in GGEs will reduce the severity of climate change -- both in its magnitude and its suddenness. Total elimination of GGEs in the near-future is possibly not worth the cost, and is probably politically impossible (considering the needs of developing countries). Finally, the climate change models are relevant to the extent that they help us to anticipate future challenges arising from climate change. Keep up the work guys!

/Inspired by discussion with John, and cross-posted to Swords Crossed and Daily Kos . /

FD: The World's Most Elite Libertarian Scientist on Global Warming

originally published at Freedom Democrats, 5/18/2007; author unknown

Sorry for the bombastic title. But I'm not sure any of you have heard of David Deutsch, so "David Deutsch on Global Warming" doesn't have the same bite as say, "Stephen Hawking on Global Warming."

Deutsch is the intellectual father of quantum computation, the viability of such likely validating his Multiverse, Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics--a paradigm to be the most radical since the overthrow of classical physcis with relativity and quantum mechanics at the turn of the 20th century. And he is a libertarian--probably, no doubt, the only one at Oxford.

Deutsche believes in "liberty as an essential human value, the abolition of victimless crimes, favors entrepreneurship and takes the view that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing at a profit."

Deutsche rejects carbon taxes, regulations, centralized control of output, arguing, that, firstly, it is too late for carbon dioxide emissions controls to work, anyways, and secondly, mankind is better off focusing on ways to adapt to a constantly changing environment, rather than spending huge sums on attempting to prevent that change.

Here's the video of his talk

Creeping communism in a market economy

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Every once in a while, I see little hints of the above dynamic in our capitalist society. Basically, it occurs when a person has so much money that he thinks nothing of parting with it. I've wondered how this plays out with waiters -- their wages are typically lower than is typical for such work, and it is supplemented by tips. As my income has increased over the years, I have increasingly left "large" tips -- tips that exceed the standard percentage, but which are still very affordable to me. I've wondered how this would play out when taken to extremes --could we reach a point where payment for services was essentially voluntary (from each according to his ability)?

I'll continue with the above thought; but first, it appears that "pay what you want" has caught on in a more extensive manner. Panera has introduced a meal that is funded totally by donations. So far, they say it is sustainable.

Of course, we have to assume that Panera is driven purely by profit; but it does say something about the development of our society that this business model is plausible. I like it much better than the model where the seller gives a portion of their profits to charity -- the "pay what you want" model cuts out the middle man and uses the business' own economy of scale to facilitate the charity (rather than relying on an outside organization), and it also offers much more flexibility in terms of how much a person wants to contribute or take. Perhaps most importantly, it doesn't distinguish between the granter and recipient of charity; they are both just people going about their lives and acquiring their dinner in the same way.

That being said, I don't want to be naive. Both the "pay as you go" system and the over-tipping strategy can have unintended consequences. They can even be cynically manipulated. 

First: over-tipping. Waiters know which customers are likely to leave a large tip, and I expect that they provide more attention to those customers in the hopes of securing a larger tip. This could lead to the perverse scenario where people are provided services according to stereotypes rather than their own willingness to pay for service. That may actually be a step backwards. Furthermore, the erratic nature of tips could make it difficult for potential waiters to decide which job to take; over-tipping could actually make low-wage workers less secure economically (if it becomes linked to lower wages for workers who receive tips).

Second: "pay what you want". I assume that Panera wants to attract people who are ready to part with large amounts of money, and will spend some of their money on other products that Panera offers (and tips for the staff). So this model could not cover the expenses of the entire store. We also have to trust that Panera is not pocketing the excess donations. Finally, Panera could manipulate the system to minimize the number of meals that they provide without full payment. For instance, they can place stores in locations that are only accessible to wealthy people. They could even lobby for laws that drive indigent people out of retail districts (such as "Measure S", which was narrowly defeated in Berkeley, CA).

Given the above considerations, I think that the first thing I will look for in any proto-communist retail establishment is that they have publicly accessible bathrooms. That is the simplest implementation of "each according to his need".